Sanofi to provide fill and finish manufacturing support for Moderna vaccine

French company is now providing manufacturing capacity to support three different COVID-19 vaccines

Having already agreed to provide manufacturing support for BioNtech and Johnson & Johnson's respective COVID-19 vaccines, Sanofi has now signed up with Moderna to help manufacture its mRNA-based shot.

Starting in September 2021, Sanofi will perform fill and finish of up to 200 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine at its site in Ridgefield, New Jersey.

Earlier this year, Sanofi agreed to provide support to BioNTech for 125 million doses for the European Union. And in February, the company announced one of its manufacturing sites in France would support Johnson & Johnson for the production of its COVID-19 vaccine at a rate of approximately 12 million doses per month.

Sanofi is the only large manufacturer to support all three vaccine efforts.

“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," said Sanofi CEO, Paul Hudson.

The company says it will continus to prioritise the development of its two COVID-19 vaccine candidates. In addition to developing a messenger RNA vaccine in partnership with Translate Bio, Sanofi is also collaborating with GlaxoSmithKline using the same recombinant protein-based manufacturing technology as one of Sanofi’s seasonal influenza vaccines, combined with GSK’s established pandemic adjuvant platform.

This latter vaccine is anticipated to be available in Q4 2021 pending Phase III outcomes and regulatory authorisations.