Morrisville, NC – President Donald Trump will be in the Triangle on Monday to tour a Morrisville plant that is manufacturing key components of a possible coronavirus vaccine, a White House official said Thursday.
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, a contracted manufacturer for vaccines and gene therapies, is working with Maryland-based Novavax, which recently won a $ 1.6 billion federal contract to develop a vaccine. Diosynth has already started production of the first batch of Novavax NVX-CoV2373 candidate vaccine.
“This is really exciting for us. We are very happy to be involved in this,” said Diosynth Chief Executive Martin Meeson. “Being able to respond to a global pandemic by having this manufacturing capability [a vaccine] it’s a real honor for us. “
The Novavax vaccine is in a Phase 1 clinical trial and is expected to progress to Phase 2 in mid-August and to Phase 3 in the fall.
The virus has infected nearly 107,000 people in North Carolina since the beginning of March, and about 1,750 of them have died.
“We have compressed the work of months into just weeks,” said Meeson.
After touring the plant, Trump will discuss collaboration between his administration and the private sector to quickly develop a vaccine and ensure accelerated manufacturing and distribution once they are ready, the White House official said.
“Just having the recognition that the president is coming to the site to learn about what we do is absolutely fantastic,” said Meeson.
The trip will be Trump’s tenth to North Carolina as president and the first since the pandemic began.
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