Biotech company Moderna has signed a deal with Spain’s Laboratorios Farmacéuticos Rovi for fill-finish duties on “hundreds of millions” of the Massachusetts-based vaccine maker’s mRNA COVID-19 shot candidate.
As part of the agreement, ROVI will provide vial filling and packaging capacity by procuring a new production line and equipment for compounding, filling, automatic visual inspection and labeling to support production of hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine candidate intended in principle to supply markets outside of the U.S. starting in early 2021. ROVI will also hire additional staffing required to support manufacturing operations and production.
“Moderna is committed to helping address the COVID-19 crisis. We are pleased to partner with ROVI to potentially supply hundreds of millions of doses of finished mRNA-1273, once approved, and help address the need for a vaccine against COVID-19 around the world,” said Juan Andres, Moderna’s Chief Technology Operations and Quality Officer.
“We are very happy about the collaboration with Moderna, whose vaccine against COVID-19 is one of the frontrunners in the race to solve this health crisis. We would be thrilled for ROVI to form part of the solution to this pandemic that is affecting all of us and to support Moderna in supplying it on a wide scale. Our proven experience and capabilities as a toll manufacturer of injectables has allowed us to reach this agreement, which would help strengthen our manufacturing area and would, in all probability, provide us with a significant growth opportunity in the area. Likewise, I would like to thank the Ministry of Health and the Spanish Medicines Agency for making themselves available and providing their support, which has been of fundamental importance, during this entire process,” said Juan López-Belmonte, Chief Executive Officer of ROVI.
About mRNA-1273, Moderna’s Vaccine Candidate Against COVID-19
mRNA-1273 is an mRNA vaccine candidate against COVID-19 encoding for a prefusion stabilized form of the Spike (S) protein, which was selected by Moderna in collaboration with investigators from Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). On July 8, the Company’s Phase 2 study of mRNA-1273 completed enrollment. Moderna’s Phase 3 study of approximately 30,000 participants, is expected to begin in July 2020.
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