Johnson & Johnson, like all drug makers in the COVID-19 vaccine race, hopes to muster enough manufacturing capacity to rapidly scale production of its vaccine. Now, for a sum of nearly half a trillion dollars, J&J is ready to put his money where his mouth is.
J&J and Maryland-based CDMO Emergent BioSolutions signed a five-year work order worth at least $ 480 million to help produce the vaccine candidate COVID-19 from the New Jersey-based drug maker, Emergent said it’s a statement.
Emergent will provide the manufacture of “large-scale” drug substances for J & J’s recombinant DNA injection starting in 2021, beginning with a $ 480 million order during the first two years of the agreement. For the past three years, the partners will use a “flexible capacity deployment model” to provide annual batches as needed, Emergent said.
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The contract comes as J&J prepares to begin human testing of its candidate, Ad26.COV2-S, later this month in a phase 1 / 2a trial. And it follows Emergent and J & J’s previous pact to reserve manufacturing space for J & J’s firing as technology transfer begins to begin rapid expansion.
As the initial step in what was released as the “first in a series” of manufacturing deals, J&J leveraged Emergent to help drive production of its shot, which the company was expecting at the time to move on to Phase 1 testing. in September.
As part of the deal, J&J pledged to expand its own capacity to produce the vaccine with Emergent by sharing its “molecule to market” manufacturing expertise. Emergent also reserved capacity at its Bayview Baltimore facility to support a possible commercial launch of the J&J shot starting in 2021, should it get approval.
J&J previously earmarked its Leiden, Netherlands facility for the production of clinical vaccines and planned to begin manufacturing the “at risk” vaccine to support human trials.
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Within days of that initial agreement with Emergent, J&J signed a similar agreement with New Jersey-based CDMO Catalent to reserve space at its Bloomington, Indiana facility for large-scale manufacturing.
Catalent pledged to increase production at the 875,000-square-foot Bloomington facility and planned to hire an additional 300 workers at the plant beginning in July with the goal of reaching a 24/7 manufacturing schedule in January.
For Emergent, the J&J work order continues a series of deals for the Maryland-based CDMO as it seeks to cement its place as the chosen manufacturer in the COVID-19 vaccine race.
RELATED: AstraZeneca, Emergent BioSolutions Sign $ 87M Agreement to Produce US Supply of COVID-19 Vaccine
In early June, the British and emerging pharmacist AstraZeneca signed a $ 87 million deal to manufacture doses of the University of Oxford adenovirus-based vaccine COVID-19 for the U.S. supply.
As part of the deal, Emergent committed to reserving large-scale manufacturing capacity for the Oxford vaccine candidate, AZD1222, at the Baltimore Bayview facility through 2020. The company also signed on to assist AstraZeneca’s goal of producing more than 2 billion vaccines per year by 2021, Emergent said.
That deal came just days after Emergent signed a $ 628 million pact with HHS’s Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to scale up production of specific COVID-19 vaccines to make available “tens to hundreds of millions “of doses until 2021, CEO Robert Kramer said.
The government agreed to disburse $ 542.7 million to reserve bulk manufacturing capacity at the Baltimore Bayview site, which was built as part of a BARDA pandemic preparedness contract signed in 2012. The remaining $ 85.5 million would be spent on expanding capacity. filling / finishing in two emerging plants. at Camden in Baltimore and Rockville, Maryland.
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