Europe Signs Deal With Sanofi, GSK To Secure Up To 300 Mln COVID-19 Vaccine Doses

(RTTNews) - The European Commission said Friday that it has signed a deal with Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline to secure up to 300 million doses of their potential COVID-19 vaccine.

The commission said the agreement marks the second deal to secure the vaccine, following a deal it already signed with AstraZeneca. Last month, the European Commission struck a deal with AstraZeneca to supply up to 400 million doses of its AZD1222 COVID-19 vaccine.

The commission also said it continues discussing similar agreements with other vaccine manufacturers--Johnson & Johnson, CureVac, Moderna and BioNTech-- with which it has concluded exploratory talks.

Sanofi stated the deal will allow the purchase of a vaccine against COVID-19 for all Member States of the European Union, which may donate reserved doses to lower- and middle-income countries.

Sanofi also said the European Union will provide upfront funding to support the scale-up of Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline manufacturing capabilities on European soil. The antigen and final vaccine doses will be manufactured in European countries, leveraging Sanofi and GSK's industrial sites in Belgium, Italy, Germany and France.

The vaccine candidate is based on the recombinant protein-based technology used by Sanofi to produce an influenza vaccine, and GSK's established adjuvant technology.

Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline started a phase 1/ 2 study in support of the vaccine's development in September, followed by a phase 3 study by the end of 2020. If approved, the companies aim to have the vaccine available by the second half of 2021.

Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, which have also signed supply deals in the U.S. and UK, said that they are scaling up manufacturing of the antigen and adjuvant with the intent to produce up to one billion doses per year overall to help meet high and urgent demand for vaccines worldwide.