Sanofi to fill/finish manufacture up to 200 million doses of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine under new agreement

As part of a new agreement reached with Moderna, Inc., Sanofi will provide fill/finish manufacturing services and supply packaging for up to 200 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, beginning in September.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with Sanofi on fill/finish manufacturing for the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine in the U.S. We would like to thank the Department of Health and Human Services and the Biden Administration for their assistance in securing this additional capacity,” Juan Andres, Moderna’s chief technical operations and quality officer, said. “This additional production will help us continue to scale up our manufacturing capacity in the United States.”

As part of a larger effort by Sanofi to support supply needs during the ongoing pandemic, the company will utilize its established infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities in Ridgefield, N.J., to complete the arrangement. Moderna’s mRNA vaccine has been critical to U.S. response efforts to COVID-19, as it was one of the two original vaccines authorized against it and remains approximately 94 percent effective against the virus.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been mobilizing on multiple fronts, and we showed solidarity across the industry,” Paul Hudson, CEO of Sanofi, said. “We are one of the few pharmaceutical companies to leverage many industrial partnerships to improve global supply and access to COVID-19 vaccines, while in parallel, also continuing to develop our two COVID-19 vaccine programs.”

Those industrial partnerships have led Sanofi to support three different COVID-19 vaccines at this point. It is also aiding the European Union with support for 125 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and utilizing a manufacturing site in France to support the manufacturing of approximately 12 million doses per month of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Separately, the company is also working with GSK on a COVID-19 vaccine candidate of its own, as well as another mRNA vaccine with Translate Bio.