Merck Supports Jenner Institute to Reach First Milestone in COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing

Merck (Darmstadt, Germany) has helped The Jenner Institute (Oxford, UK) lay the foundation for large-scale production of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19.

Over the last two years, Merck’s collaboration with The Jenner Institute has led to the development of a rapid, scalable platform following good manufacturing practices and using disposable technologies for the Institute’s adenovirus platform. While the initial work was developed with a rabies vaccine candidate, the platform was then validated with different adenovirus constructs aiming at accelerating future vaccine development and manufacturing.

Tapping into Merck’s previous work provided a solid head start for plans to scale-up the manufacture of Jenner’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Developing the manufacturing process itself would normally take at least six months to a year, but in just two months’ time, Merck supported the Jenner team and their collaborators to evaluate the existing manufacturing platform for use with the new vaccine candidate, and improved critical process steps.

“We have brought the future of vaccine manufacturing to the present,” said Udit Batra, member of the Merck Executive Board and CEO, Life Science. “This is an important step in treating Covid-19 and other diseases that impact global public health. This work marks a milestone in the vaccine manufacturing development journey, as clinical testing continues to advance.”

“In an unprecedented time period, The Jenner Institute’s team was able to develop the 10-liter manufacturing scale process based on the previously generated platform with Merck, preparing us for the next round of scale-up efforts,” said Dr. Sandy Douglas, vaccine manufacturing scale-up project lead at The Jenner Institute. “Industry collaborations, such as ours with Merck, showcase the value that these efforts have in accelerating our response to outbreaks.”

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