Vaccine Development and Manufacturing

The Gavi advance market commitment for COVID-19 vaccines is a new financing instrument aimed at incentivizing vaccine manufacturers to produce sufficient and affordable quantities of COVID-19 vaccines.

Despite the clear danger of COVID-19 to global health, vaccine opponents have gained ground, as fearful populations lose faith in the capabilities of industry and government to protect public health.

The acquisition gives Novovax an annual operating capacity of more that one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine antigen.

The company announced that it has been issued a task order under a present contract with BARDA to use its contract development and manufacturing capabilities and knowledge to assist in the US government’s efforts to deliver COVID-19 vaccines.

Merck will acquire Themis Bioscience and collaborate with IAVI and Ridgeback Bio on COVID-19 vaccines and therapies.

Merck will use Themis’s vector platform to develop a vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

Advent manufactured the vaccine doses for the Phase 2/3 clinical trial.

The White House looks to bring in credible experts for its Operation Warp Speed initiative to advance therapies and vaccines to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The company announced that participants have enrolled in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, NVX‑CoV2373, a prefusion protein made using Novavax’s proprietary nanoparticle technology.

Funding from the US government could lead to 300 million coronavirus vaccine doses by October 2020.

CanSinoBIO will license-in Precision NanoSystems' proprietary RNA vaccine platform technology while the latter leads the development of the RNA vaccine formulation.

Participants in two dosing cohorts in Moderna’s mRNA-1273 study reached or exceeded neutralizing antibody titers generally seen in convalescent sera.

Vibalogics is contracted to manufacture Janssen's COVID-19 candidate vaccine at its GMP-accredited facility in Cuxhaven, Germany.

Leadership was announced for the US government’s Operation Warp Speed program, which aims to deliver COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations will invest up to $384 million of additional funding, in addition to the $4 million it invested in March, to advance the clinical development of NVX-CoV2373, Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

The goal of the collaboration is to manufacture up to one billion does per year of mRNA-1273, Moderna’s vaccine against the novel coronavirus.

Will moving at “warp speed” to develop a vaccine impact efficacy or safety?

Catalent and Johnson & Johnson announce joint investment and tech transfer to prepare for rapid scale-up and segregated cGMP commercial manufacturing capacity.

AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have announced that they will collaborate on the global development and distribution of the university’s potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine aimed at preventing COVID-19 infection.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Batavia’s low-cost vaccine manufacturing process will be used to produce Wistar’s drug substance and drug product formulations, to be distributed to vaccine manufacturers.

Merck will provide funding and will work with researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology to identify targets for therapeutic intervention and vaccine development.

A UK BioIndustry Association industry-led vaccine manufacturing group has welcomed a recent announcement by the government of the UK, that it will receive £14 million (US$17.3 million) in investment to rapidly scale up the development of vaccines for COVID-19.

The vaccine will be based on a ReiThera-proprietary simian adenoviral vector with strong immunological potency and low pre-existing immunity in humans.

A new strategic plan from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, details the institute’s plan for accelerating research to diagnose, prevent and treat COVID-19.

Emergent will offer up its drug substance manufacturing services with support by investments from Johnson & Johnson starting in 2020.