Emergent BioSolutions to manufacture another COVID-19 vaccine candidate - Maryland Daily Record

Syed Husain, senior vice president and head of contract development and manufacturing at Emergent Biosolutions. (Emergent BioSolutions submitted photo)

A Gaithersburg life sciences company has signed a $135 million deal with another drug company to provide contract development and manufacturing services for its lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. will provide drug substance manufacturing services supported by investments from Johnson & Johnson beginning in 2020, and will reserve some of its large-scale manufacturing capacity in 2021 for commercial manufacturing of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.

To support Johnson & Johnson’s goal of supplying one billion doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, Emergent is negotiating a long-term commercial manufacturing agreement for large-scale drug substance manufacturing anticipated to begin in 2021. Large-scale manufacturing of drug substance for Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate will be done at Emergent’s Baltimore Bayview facility.

Syed T. Husain, senior vice president and contract development and manufacturing business unit head at Emergent, said in a news release that Emergent could make up to 300 million doses to advance the vaccine candidate.

Emergent is also working on COVID-19 vaccine candidates with Vaxart Inc. of South San Francisco, California, as well as with Novavax Inc. of Gaithersburg.