By Asmau Ahmad
COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna Inc (MRNA) on Wednesday announced that it has entered into an additional agreement with Lonza Group AG, a supplier to the pharmaceutical healthcare and life-science industries.
The agreement is to support drug substance manufacturing for its global supply chain.
The agreement will establish a new production line at Lonza’s Geleen site in the Netherlands, contributing to the supply of an additional 300 million doses of Moderna’s updated booster variant vaccine candidate if authorised,per year at a 50g dose.
With the latest deal, Moderna now expects to be able to supply the equivalent of 600 million 50g doses per year from production within the European Union.
The company had earlier announced investments in drug substance manufacturing with ROVI in Granada, Spain.
Both these new drug substance lines in the European Union are expected to be operational before the end of 2021. Moderna already works with ROVI and Recipharm in France for fill/finish of COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna in Europe.
The company recently entered into a manufacturing services and supply agreement with Samsung Biologics in South Korea to provide additional large scale commercial fill or finish services.
In the United States, the company also works with Lonza Portsmouth for drug substance production, and partners with Catalent, Baxter BioPharma Solutions, Sanofi and Thermo Fisher Scientific for fill/finish services.
With these additional manufacturing investments, the company expects to increase production in late 2021 and early 2022 to support global supply of its COVID-19 vaccine.
