Editor’s Note: This story first appeared in the Washington Business Journal. See the original post here.
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. has been doubling down on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. Now, the federal government is betting on the Maryland biotech with an expanded contract valued at up to $628 million.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, has expanded a contract with Emergent to speed up the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines across the U.S. Under the agreement, Emergent will provide manufacturing support for coronavirus vaccine candidates through 2021, the Gaithersburg company said Monday. That component of the deal, valued at about $542.7 million, provides capacity to other efforts at Emergent’s three facilities in Rockville, and Bayview and Camden in Baltimore.
The deal with BARDA, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, also brings a roughly $85.5 million investment for Emergent to expand its production capabilities in Camden and Rockville, “creating a U.S.-based manufacturing supply chain for pharmaceutical and biotechnology innovators of Covid-19 vaccine candidates,” Emergent said in its announcement.
The contract builds upon a 2012 public-private partnership between Emergent and HHS that stood up Emergent’s Bayview facility for rapid vaccine and drug manufacturing amid public health emergencies. That site can now produce tens of millions to hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine annually, the company said.
“This innovative solution paves the way for pharmaceutical and biotechnology innovators with leading Covid-19 vaccine candidates to have an established U.S. development and manufacturing supply chain,” said Syed Husain, senior vice president and contract development and manufacturing organization head at Emergent. “This investment in increased capacity and capabilities will serve the industry’s expanding clinical and commercial pipelines more broadly, ultimately benefiting more patients globally.”
Emergent’s stock was up more than 10% to $92.36 per share Monday around noon.
The work covered in this deal comes alongside Emergent’s existing partnerships with Gaithersburg’s Novavax, San Francisco’s Vaxart and New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson. Emergent is simultaneously advancing its own programs: two treatments for Covid-19, both expected to reach phase 2 clinical trials in the third quarter of this year. One, using plasma from people who have recovered from the disease, would serve both individuals at high risk of exposure, and hospitalized patients with severe complications. The other uses antibodies from horses, which are believed to have a greater concentration of protective antibodies than human-based plasma. “We’re looking to have as many shots on goal as possible,” Emergent President and CEO Bob Kramer said in a recent interview.
Meanwhile, neighboring Gaithersburg biotech Altimmune has gotten a regulatory nod to move forward with clinical trials for a Covid-19 treatment, which it said may help prevent severe lung inflammation from the disease and reduce hospitalizations. The company expects early-stage study results for the treatment sometime in Q4.
The therapeutic is a separate candidate from Altimmune’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate, “as our team is working rapidly and diligently to fight this pandemic,” Altimmune CEO and President Vipin Garg said in a statement.
