The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and Emergent BioSolutions Inc. are collaborating to support the manufacturing of Johnson & Johnson’s lead investigational COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
Johnson & Johnson said it hopes to supply more than one billion doses of the vaccine globally.
Under the manufacturing agreement, Johnson & Johnson plans to expand drug substance capacity related to the vaccine candidate. Emergent has agreed to provide drug substance manufacturing services with its molecule-to-market CDMO offering. Emergent may provide operations support for commercial manufacturing of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, using Janssen’s AdVac and PER.C6 technologies beginning in 2021.
Johnson & Johnson has begun preparations for clinical vaccine production at its facility in Leiden, the Netherlands, and aims to start phase I human clinical studies of its vaccine candidate in September 2020. Johnson & Johnson will begin production at risk and is committed to bringing an affordable vaccine to the public on a not-for-profit basis for emergency pandemic use.
Johnson & Johnson said it plans to useJanssen’s proven AdVac and PER.C6 technologies to develop new vaccine candidates and upscale production of the optimal vaccine candidate. The same technology was used to develop and manufacture the company’s investigational Ebola vaccine, and construct RSV and HIV vaccine candidates that are now in phase II or phase III of clinical development.
