Latest News

Lonza expands EU production capacity for Moderna vaccine

Lonza’s excellence centre for gene and cell therapy at Geelen/Maastricht, the Netherlands. © Lonza


by tg

Lonza will expand its production capacity of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine mRNA1273 at its manufacturing site in Geelen, the Netherlands. 

The CDMO announced to open a new drug substance production line at Lonza’s site in Geleen, Netherlands, by Q4/2021 to produce up to an additional 300 million doses per year. The new production line in Geleen (NL) will complement Lonza’s existing drug substance production network for COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna.

In May 2020, Lonza and Moderna announced a ten-year strategic collaboration agreement to enable the manufacture of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine and additional Moderna products in the future. Since then, Lonza has installed three production lines at its Visp (CH) site and one production line in Portsmouth (US). In April 2021, Lonza and Moderna entered a new agreement to add three further production lines at its Visp (CH) site.

The new production line in Geleen (NL) is expected to be operational by the end of 2021. Lonza will leverage its existing infrastructure in Geleen (NL) to provide fast build-out and ramp-up of operations.

COVID-19 vaccine for poor countries

The US company plans to supply up to 500 million doses of its proprietary mRNA vaccine to the COVAX Facility, which orders and distributes COVID-19...

AZD1222 claims 79% effecacy in pivotal US study

For exactly one day, the belief that AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine AZD1222 may be better than its reputation lasted. But because the ailing vaccine...

EMA: AZD1222 causes serious rare ADEs

However, the EMA has no idea which component of the cheapest COVID-19 vaccine on the market is supposed to cause the splanchnic leg and sinus vein...

Targeting SARS-CoV-2 differently

Using X-ray crystallography, Sebastian Günther and colleagues screened more than 5,000 drug compounds, identified seven compounds that bind to Mpro,...

BioPhero A/S raises US$17m in Series A funding

New investor  exFMC Ventures, as well as existing investors Syngenta Group Ventures and Novo Holdings also participated in the...

mRNA: Evonik cooperates with Stanford University

This month, researchers and developers from Evonik are starting a three-year collaboration with scientists from the renowned Stanford University in...

Novel COVID antibody enters clinical testing

In contrast to existing COVID-19 treatments, the safety design of COR-101 is optimised for the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with...