(RTTNews) – Biotechnology company Novavax, Inc. (NVAX) and Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (TAK) announced Friday a partnership for the development, manufacturing and commercialization of Novavax’ COVID-19 vaccine candidate NVX-CoV2373 in Japan.
NVX-CoV2373 is a stable, prefusion protein made using Novavax’ recombinant protein nanoparticle technology and includes Novavax’ proprietary Matrix-M adjuvant. The vaccine candidate is engineered from the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2.
Novavax will license and transfer manufacturing technologies to enable Takeda to manufacture the vaccine antigen and will supply the Matrix-M adjuvant to Takeda.
Takeda will be responsible for regulatory submission to the MHLW and will produce and distribute NVX-CoV2373 in Japan. It anticipates the capacity to manufacture over 250 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine per year.
Takeda will receive funding from the Government of Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) to support the technology transfer, establishment of infrastructure and scale-up of manufacturing.