Moderna has announced a supply agreement with the UK government to supply mRNA-1273, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, beginning in March 2021 if it is approved for use by UK regulatory authorities.
This agreement comes as the UK continues its efforts to secure access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines.
“We appreciate the collaboration with the UK government as with many other governments and other key partners around the world,” said Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna.
“For almost a decade, Moderna has invested in creating and developing a novel platform for designing and manufacturing a new class of mRNA-based vaccines. We are proud of our progress including the positive first interim analysis from our Phase III COVE study recently released. As we advance the clinical development of mRNA-1273, this continues to be a pivotal moment for us all.”
Yesterday (16 November), Moderna announced that the independent, US NIH-appointed Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for the Phase III study of mRNA-1273, had reported that the trial had met the statistical criteria pre-specified in the study protocol for efficacy, with a vaccine efficacy of 94.5%.
Known as the COVE study, this had enrolled more than 30,000 participants in the US and is a collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the US Department of Health and Human Services.
On October 27, 2020, Moderna received confirmation that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the United Kingdom started the rolling review process of mRNA-1273.
Image credit: Daniel Schludi
