By Nick Taylor

13-Aug-2020 – Last updated on 13-Aug-2020 at 13:03 GMT

Aug 2, 2020 | AstraZeneca, BARDA, COVID-19, GlaxoSmithKline, News, Vaccine

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Defense (DoD) today announced agreements with Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to support advanced development including clinical trials and large-scale manufacturing of 100 million doses of a COVID-19 investigational adjuvanted vaccine. In a bid to diversify its bets on novel vaccine targets, the federal government seeks to own the potential vaccine that can arise from a more proven platform. Hence the they use public monies to pay the two “Big Pharmas” up to $2.1 billion to accelerate the development and manufacturing of the duo’s adjuvanted, recombinant COVID-19 vaccine candidate. By funding the manufacturing effort, the federal government will own the doses that result from the demonstration project. The adjuvanted vaccine doses could be used in clinical trials or, if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorizes use, as outlined in agency guidance, the doses would be distributed as part of a COVID-19 vaccination campaign. This is the largest federal government grant on record during the pandemic beating out the $1.6 billion given to Novavax for its adjuvanted nanoparticle vaccine candidate called NVX-CoV-2373.

The Combined Product

Both companies have long-standing relationships with BARDA. Today’s effort with Sanofi builds on initial vaccine development work undertaken through a flexible agreement between BARDA and Protein Sciences, part of Sanofi, and work with GSK on adjuvant for pandemic influenza vaccines.

The vaccine candidate uses an antigen from Sanofi, which stimulates the body’s immune response against the virus, based on recombinant DNA technology and is being developed using an adjuvant from GSK to enhance the immune response, reduce the amount of antigen required per dose, and improve the chances of delivering an effective vaccine that can be manufactured at scale. GSK’s manufacturing scale is supported through U.S.-based reactivation efforts funded by BARDA since 2018.