Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRNA) disclosed that it has inked an agreement with Lonza to back drug substance production for its global supply chain. The deal will build a new production line at Lonza’s Geleen site in the Netherlands. It will make a contribution to the deliver an extra 300 million doses of Moderna’s modernized booster variant vaccine candidate, if approved, per year, at a 50-µg dose.
Additionally, with the earlier disclosed investments in drug substance production with ROVI in Granada, Spain, the firm is now anticipating being able to deliver the equivalent of 600 million 50 µg doses per year from manufacturing within the European Union. Both new drug substance lines in the European Union are anticipated to be up and running before the end of 2021.
Shares of Moderna Inc. tumbled 0.19% as it lost -0.35 during the trading session of Tuesday. The firm has recorded a trading volume of 6.00 million as compared to the average volume of 9.41 million. In the past 52-weeks of a trading session, the share of the firm went up to $54.21 and $189.26 during the 52 -week low and high range, respectively. The firm has a total market capitalization of $71.95 billion at the time of writing.
Moderna already works with ROVI and Recipharm (France) for the fill/finish of COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna in Europe and newly inked a Manufacturing Services and Supply Agreement with Samsung Biologics in South Korea to offer an extra-large scale, commercial fill/finish services.
In the U.S., the firm also is collaborating with Lonza Portsmouth for drug substance production, and associates with Catalent, Baxter BioPharma Solutions, Sanofi, and Thermo Fisher Scientific for fill/finish services. The firm is pledging to boost production in late 2021 and early 2022 to support the global supply of its COVID-19 vaccine.