Pandemic
Nova Gaith TRIB
Novavax’s Effort to Vaccinate the World, From Zero to Not Quite Warp Speed By Sarah Jane Tribble and Rachana Pradhan
ON A SWELTERING June morning, Novavax CEO and covid vaccine maker Stanley Erck stood on a stage unmasked and did something that would have been unthinkable six months ago: He shook hands with Maryland’s governor. Erck was with Gov. Larry Hogan to announce Novavax’s global vaccine headquarters ― a campus expected to house laboratories and more than 800 employees. Hogan called Novavax’s future “bright” and marveled that more than 71% of the state’s adults had received at least one shot. Novavax’s quest to scale up operations underscores how difficult it can be to launch a vaccine ― even with the formula and technology in hand. So what happened? It has had the financial backing of the U.S. government and full faith of international agencies. Everything took longer than expected: hiring necessary researchers and scientists, getting supplies and transferring its vaccine technology. It didn’t move at warp speed. “We’re not making aspirin,” Trizzino said. “We’re making a very complicated biological.”
A Moonshot Goal
Equipped with its recombinant nanoparticle vaccine mixed with Matrix-M, Novavax deployed a core team of employees, dubbed “SuperNOVAs,” to crisscross the globe. They assembled a manufacturing network and shared vaccine technology in India, South Korea, Spain, Japan and the Czech Republic as well as in the United States ― about 20 contract manufacturing and test sites in all. “This takes time and expertise,” Trizzino said. “You just simply can’t hand over the recipe and then walk away from it and expect you’re going to have a high-quality product.” Novavax is contracted to form the backbone of the COVAX initiative, having promised 1.1 billion doses starting this year for developing countries. And while President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would donate 500 million doses of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine abroad, Novavax is still seen as vital to urgent efforts worldwide to battle the virus and its variants. Novavax’s moonshot goal of producing 2 billion shots a year increasingly looks like a pipe dream for 2021. “It is very hard to accept that they will make 2 billion doses as they had originally committed. I’m very skeptical,” said Prashant Yadav, a health care supply chain expert and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. One of Novavax’s biggest challenges, Yadav said, is relying on “so many sites” that aren’t fully under its control, while other manufacturers own their plants. The more places Novavax produces the vaccine, the more challenging it is to make sure the vaccine and its elements are comparable in every place.
A year before the covid pandemic hit, Novavax had a failed late-stage trial on a potential respiratory virus vaccine, after which it cut its workforce and sold off all its manufacturing capabilities. So, when more than $2 billion in federal and international funding landed at its doorstep, Novavax found itself developing both “a vaccine and a company” in 12 months, said Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development. Novavax’s proprietary secret ingredient is Matrix-M, an immune booster. Executives say the additive ― derived from Chilean soapbark trees ― works so well that less of an antibody-producing ‘Hadn’t Heard of Covid-19’ antigen would be needed with it in a vaccine. One John Kutney, Novavax’s senior director of financial filing said Matrix-M “has the potential to manufacturing, joined a BioBuzz video in be of immense value.” December, in an effort to recruit urgently needed 54
September-October 2021
DAWN
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