There seem to be different technologies that can produce vaccines. On the one hand there’s an old-fashionated way to create vaccines.
Then there are multiple different companies that make mRNA-based vaccines and as far as I understand they all use different technology to do so and are therefore not easily exchangable.
CureVac announced that they got a 80 million Euro loan from the EU that they use to build a facility that can produce ~1,000,000,000 doses of a possible vaccine if the dose is equal to what they found to be needed for their rapies vaccine candidate.
Moderna who started their human trial on March 16th made a SEC filing in which they wrote:
On March 20, 2020, Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, was interviewed by representatives of Goldman Sachs regarding the Company’s work onCOVID-19. During such interview, Mr. Bancel indicated that while a commercially-available vaccine is not likely to be available for at least 12-18months, it is possible that under emergency use, a vaccine could be available to some people, possibly including healthcare professionals, in the fall of2020. In addition, Mr. Bancel confirmed that the Company is scaling up manufacturing capacity toward the production of millions of doses per month,in the potential form of individual or multi-dose vials. As has previously been disclosed, the ability of the Company to make millions of doses per month is contingent on investments in the scale up and further buildout of the Company’s existing manufacturing infrastructure.
I would predict that if Moderna starts giving out a million vaccines to health workers under emergency use any additional doses of vaccines they produce would also find willing patients whether or not the drug is offically commercially-available. Politically it wouldn’t be defensible to let millions of doses of a vaccines that’s good enough for health workers to lie around.
The highlited passage looks to me like Moderna needs cash to scale up their production.
They said that currently they can produce 10,000,000 per campaign and with the new facility they can produce 1,000,000,000 per campaign in the press call. Unfortunately, they didn’t specify how long a campaign is going to last.
Last year they got some funds to develop a portable facility (The RNA Printer) that can produce 1,000,000 doses in two weeks.
There seem to be different technologies that can produce vaccines. On the one hand there’s an old-fashionated way to create vaccines.
Then there are multiple different companies that make mRNA-based vaccines and as far as I understand they all use different technology to do so and are therefore not easily exchangable.
CureVac announced that they got a 80 million Euro loan from the EU that they use to build a facility that can produce ~1,000,000,000 doses of a possible vaccine if the dose is equal to what they found to be needed for their rapies vaccine candidate.
Moderna who started their human trial on March 16th made a SEC filing in which they wrote:
I would predict that if Moderna starts giving out a million vaccines to health workers under emergency use any additional doses of vaccines they produce would also find willing patients whether or not the drug is offically commercially-available. Politically it wouldn’t be defensible to let millions of doses of a vaccines that’s good enough for health workers to lie around.
The highlited passage looks to me like Moderna needs cash to scale up their production.
According to the main investor in CureVac, there current plan is to make the vaccine generally available at the end of the year:
https://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/weil-biotech-leben-rettet-curevac-investor-im-fruehsommer-koennen-wir-mit-dem-test-des-impfstoffs-am-menschen-beginnen_id_11829181.html
Would be interesting to know how long they’d have to produce ~1,000,000,000 doses.
They said that currently they can produce 10,000,000 per campaign and with the new facility they can produce 1,000,000,000 per campaign in the press call. Unfortunately, they didn’t specify how long a campaign is going to last.
Last year they got some funds to develop a portable facility (The RNA Printer) that can produce 1,000,000 doses in two weeks.
Unfortunately, 1bn doses is likely no more than a quarter of the world’s need—less if COVID is stopped more places.