Germany based CureVac N.V., a biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of transformative medicines based on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) and Celonic Group, a premium biopharmaceutical Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) specializing in the development and production of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) and mammalian cell line-expressed bio-therapeutics, announced their partnership for the production of CureVac’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV.

The parties entered into a commercial supply agreement to produce CureVac’s coronavirus vaccine candidate at Celonic’s state-of-the-art commercial manufacturing facility for biologics and ATMPs, in Heidelberg, Germany. In total Celonic will be prepared to manufacture more than 100 million doses of CVnCoV. More than 50 million doses are expected to be produced before the end of 2021. Under the terms of the initial agreement, technology and knowledge transfer is already underway. The commercial supply agreement includes manufacturing of the mRNA drug substance as well as LNP formulation of the bulk drug product.

CureVac reaffirms an expected output capacity of its broad European manufacturing network of up to 300 million doses in 2021.

Dr. Florian von der Mülbe, Chief Production Officer of CureVac said, “With this partnership, we are further extending our integrated European manufacturing network, reinforcing the overall production capacity for our COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV.”