Moderna joins EU advanced talks to provide candidates for COVID-19 faxes

(Reuters) – Modern Inc said on Monday that it has closed advanced talks with the European Union to supply 80 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, which is currently in late-stage testing.

The potential agreement provides an option for Member States to purchase an additional 80 million doses of mRNA-1273 for a total of up to 160 million doses, the company said, without disclosing the financial terms of the pact.

The drug developer is the fifth company with which the EU has closed talks, after Sanofi-GSK , Johnson & Johnson , CureVac and signing a pre-purchase agreement with AstraZeneca .

Moderna said it worked with production partners such as Lonza Group AG of Switzerland and Laboratorios Pharmacéuticos Rovi SA of Spain to produce the vaccine outside the United States.

Moderna, which is one of a handful of companies with vaccine candidates in late-stage testing, also said it was on track to complete enrollment of about 30,000 study participants in September.

Earlier this month, the company signed a pact with the United States to supply 100 million doses of the potential COVID-19 vaccine for about $ 1.5 billion.

Moderna reported Monday that global manufacturing scaled up to deliver about 500 million doses per year and possibly up to 1 billion doses per year, beginning in 2021.

(Report by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Edited by Arun Koyyur)