Norvavax is also in the running to develop a vaccine against COVID-19 (File)
Novavax Inc. is purchasing a manufacturing facility from the Serum Institute of India, the world‘s largest producer of vaccines by volume, as the U.S. company aims to produce 1 billion doses of its candidate vaccine COVID-19 next year.
The US company announced Wednesday that it will buy Praha Vaccines, based in the Czech Republic, a unit of the Indian group Cyrus Poonawalla, also owner of the Serum Institute, for $ 167 million in cash.
Novavax is one of many companies in the race to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, which has no current treatment or vaccine and has already killed around 3,500,000 people.
While experts have predicted that an injection will likely take 12 to 18 months to develop, vaccines are seen by world leaders as the only real way to restart their stalled economy after months of blockages.
Last week, the United States obtained almost a third of the first billion doses planned for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 experimental vaccine by pledging up to $ 1.2 billion, raising fears that the world‘s most wealthy be able to protect their citizens first.
Novavax on Tuesday enrolled its first participant in a preliminary study testing the candidate vaccine in humans.
On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that 10 experimental vaccines are being tested on humans, including the compound Novavax.
Groups including CanSino, Moderna and an alliance between the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca are at various stages of development of a safe and effective vaccine.
The Novavax agreement will help provide an annual capacity of more than a billion doses of antigen from 2021 for its candidate vaccine COVID-19, NVX-CoV2373.
Novavax, which has no drugs on the market, fell 9% at the start of the session. The stock had risen more than 1000% in 2020 until Tuesday’s close.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
