Novavax new coronavirus vaccine receives $384 million in funding for Phase I clinical launch this month

Following a small funding grant ($4 million) in March for early vaccine development, Novavax announced on May 11 that it had received a further $384 million from the Alliance for The Epidemic Prevention and Innovation, CEPI, to fund the clinical development of its COVID-19 candidate vaccine and early work to expand productionNovavax's COVID-19 candidate vaccine, NVX-COV2373, is a recombinant nanoparticle vaccine that needs to be used in conjunction with the company's Matrix-M adjuumNovavax's shares rose more than 30 percent after the news brokeSpecifically, Novavax will use the funds to advance Phase I/II clinical trials of NVX-COV2373, in which Phase I trials will begin in Australia this month, while Phase II trials are scheduled to be conducted in several countries after the top line results of phase I trials are available in JulyIn addition to advancing clinical trials, Novavax plans to use some of the money to expand production, saying it will produce 100 million doses of the vaccine by the end of 2020, with a future goal of potentially producing 1 billion doses by 2021in addition to Novavax,CEPI has also funded COVID-19 vaccine development for organizations and institutions such as Moderna, Inovio and Curevac, the University of Hong Kong, Oxford University and the University of Queensland"Our vaccine development program is beginning to show progress, so it is critical that we provide financial support to help increase production capacity so that our partners are able to produce vaccines globally," Richard Hatchett, chief executive ofCEPI, said in a statementWhile we still have a long way to go, we are taking an important step towards delivering safe, effective and globally accessible vaccines as soon as possiblein recent days, several companies participating in the COVID-19 vaccine competition have announced their progress and schedule of research and developmentPfizer said on Monday it plans to work with contract manufacturers to build supply chains in the U.Sand Europe to produce some of its existing drugs, including sterile injectionsLast week, Moderna said it planned to launch Phase 2 clinical trials of its mRNA candidate vaccine in the second quarter, with a Phase 3 study in early summer, according to which it is expected to obtain a biologic license application for the vaccine next yearin addition to the above companies, Johnson and Johnson and partners Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline are also involved in the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, AstraZeneca has signed a contract to produce vaccines for the Oxford project, etcGlobally, the World Health Organization is currently tracking eight human testing programs for new coronary pneumonia and more than 100 preclinical testing programsoriginal title: Novavax scores $384M deal, CEPI's largest ever, to fund coronavirus vaccine work