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Deals between drugmakers and CDMO
on Covid-19 accelerate

By The Editor - 19 november 2020

While the giants of drug and biotechnology manufacturers are working in a frantic race on the projects of vaccine candidates, many manufacturing contracts are under negotiation in order to meet the production capacities to be implemented.

This week, CureVac NV announced that it is accelerating the expansion of its manufacturing network to deliver pandemic-scale volumes of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV.

CureVac, on July 6 signed a loan agreement of 75 million euros with the European Investment Bank for the development and large-scale production of vaccines, including CureVac's vaccine candidate against COVID-19. CureVac is one of the pioneers in the development of a new class of vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA), transported into cells by lipid nanoparticles.

Preparations for the start of production and the necessary technology transfers are underway. CureVac decided to build a large and integrated European vaccine manufacturing network with highly experienced CDMO partners for each of the key stages of CVnCoV manufacturing. The objective is to increase its transformed CVnCoV manufacturing capacities up to 300 million doses in 2021 and 600 million doses in 2022. CureVac's CVnCoV manufacturing network will benefit from the expertise and capacities in Germany, in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Austria, as well as potential in Sweden, Poland, Italy and Ireland.

Earlier this week, the European Commission approved a fifth contract with CureVac, which provides for the initial purchase of 225 million doses on behalf of all EU member states, as well as the possibility of requesting up to 180 million additional doses to be provided. once a vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective against COVID-19. The contract with CureVac expands the already large portfolio of vaccines to be produced in Europe, in particular the contracts signed with AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV and BioNtech-Pfizer, as well as the exploratory negotiations with Moderna. This diverse vaccine portfolio will ensure that Europe is well prepared for vaccination, once vaccines are proven to be safe and effective.

PHARMAnetwork has gathered in issue 47 of the magazine the main agreements concluded with CDMOs

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