Catalent to support production of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine

Advanced drug delivery technology provider Catalent will support the production of 100 million doses of biotech Moderna’s Covid-19 candidate vaccine as the result of a new collaboration.

The collaboration will see Catalent undertake large-scale commercial fill-finish manufacturing of Moderna’s mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine candidate (mRNA-1273) at its facility in Bloomington, Indiana.

As part of the agreement, Catalent will provide vial filling and packaging capacity for the production of an initial 100 million doses of the vaccine candidate. The aim is to supply the US market with the vaccine in the third quarter of 2020. The companies are currently in discussions to expand the partnership for continued production of hundreds of millions of additional doses.  

Catalent will also provide clinical supply services from its facilities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including packaging and labelling, as well as storage and distribution to support Moderna’s Phase 3 clinical study for the candidate.

“We appreciate this collaboration with Catalent and the flexibility of their team to deliver critical fill-finish capacity for mRNA-1273 at unprecedented speed,” said Juan Andres, Moderna’s chief technical operations and quality officer. “It has been wonderful to see both teams working together to support the common good.”

“Catalent is proud to partner with Moderna in its work to address this critical public health need,” commented John Chiminski, chair and chief executive officer of Catalent. “Catalent’s proven expertise in manufacturing scale-up and commercial production are well suited to support Moderna’s efforts to prepare for wide-scale supply of this vaccine candidate so that it is available if appropriate to address the pandemic.”