Novartis to Help Produce Covid-19 Vaccines or Treatments Made by Other Companies

Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said the company is looking to help other companies scale up production of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments and is currently in talks with “key players.”

Narasimhan said the company could produce monoclonal antibodies, vaccines or fill vials of vaccine doses.

Earlier this week, Sanofi also said it would help fill and pack more than100 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (DID, Jan. 27). Unlike Novartis, Sanofi has been developing its own vaccine with GlaxoSmithKline, but saw a setback in December because of lackluster efficacy results for older adults.

Merck, which just dropped its COVID-19 vaccine program after two candidates were found to deliver insufficient immunity (DID, Jan. 26), also saidit is planning to redirect current vaccine manufacturing capacity toward production of MK-7110 — a COVID-19 therapeutic it secured from OncoImmune in a $425 million acquisition (DID, Nov. 24, 2020). ― Jason Scott