Novartis to Help CureVac Speed Vaccine Rollout
A few weeks ago, Novartis said it was exploring ways to participate in the European Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing effort. In the meantime, it has been busy. On Mar. 4 the Swiss drugmaker signed an initial manufacturing agreement with CureVac to boost the German biotech’s overall vaccine capacity by 50 million doses in 2021 and 200 million doses in 2022.
Previousy, Novartis agreed to help Pfizer and BioNTech with production of their Comirnaty-branded mRNA vaccine.
Tübingen-based CureVac aims to produce 300 million doses of its mRNA candidate called CVnCoV during 2021 and up to 600 million doses in 2022 to fulfill European supply commitments.
Curevac and Novartis will share technology and jointly carry out test manufacturing runs at Novartis’ site in Kundl, Austria, where the Swiss pharma giant will produce mRNA and bulk drug product for the vaccine. Novartis is currently ramping up capacity at the site and hopes to have product ready to ship by summer this year.
Novartis “is a pioneer and has decades of experience in pharmaceutical production of proteins and in more recent years of nucleic acids,” global head of technical operations Steffen Lang said, commenting on the deal.
The German company has assembled a multi-member team to get its product to market. it recently signed a large-scale production collaboration with Bayer and is teaming up with CDMOs Fareva and Rentschler as well as the CDMO arm of Germany’s Wacker Chemie. Its agreememt with the UK’s largest drugmaker, Glaxo SmithKline, covers not only CVnCov but also potential variants.
in December 2020, CureVac began a phase 2/3 cinical trial, working with a 12µg dose of CVnCoV. Last month, it initiated a rolling submission with the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The biotech hopes to apply for approval in mid-2021.
Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist
