Lonza has announced the expansion of its collaboration with Moderna to further extend the manufacture of the drug substance for the company’s COVID-19 vaccine and provides for the installation of a manufacturing line for drug substance production at Lonza’s Geleen site in the Netherlands.
The production line will complement the company’s existing drug substance production network for COVID-19 vaccine and deliver an additional manufacturing step to increase overall drug substance output. As such, the line will contribute to the supply of up to an additional 300 million doses per year, Lonza says, once operating at full capacity.
In May 2020, the companies announced a ten-year strategic collaboration agreement to enable the manufacture of the vaccine and additional Moderna products in the future. Since then, Lonza has installed three production lines at its Visp, Switzerland site and one production line in Portsmouth, United States. In April 2021, the companies agreed to add three further production lines at Lonza’s Visp site.
The production line in Geleen is expected to be operational by the end of 2021. The CDMO will leverage its existing infrastructure in the location to provide fast build-out and ramp-up of operations, it says.
Jean-Christophe Hyvert, President, Biologics and Cell & Gene, Lonza said: “Once more, we are pleased to leverage our network as we expand our collaboration with Moderna further to extend our mRNA manufacturing to Lonza Geleen. The extension reflects the continuing growth of our strategic collaboration with Moderna. We are proud to play our part in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic and look forward to bringing to bear our experience from Portsmouth and Visp at our Geleen site in the Netherlands.”
