Moderna may establish Korean affiliate
Moderna is considering establishing an affiliate in Korea, with the U.S.-based biotech company letting a local company handle the production of its COVID-19 vaccines, a leading local brokerage said, Tuesday.
“As far as our understanding goes, Moderna plans to strengthen its vaccine production capabilities by establishing affiliates in Korea, Japan and Australia this year. Once the establishment process is done, Moderna could use a Korean company as its contract manufacturing organization (CMO) partner to manufacture its COVID-19 vaccines,” NH Investment analyst Park Byungkuk said in a report to clients.
Park claimed that this was based on his observations at Moderna’s second in-house event held April 15. “During the event, Moderna frequently referred to the possibility of establishing an affiliate in Korea,” the analyst explained.
The CMO business has become a mainstream strategy for Korea’s leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies due to the continued spread of COVID-19. Biopharmaceutical CMOs usually take orders from clients and manufacture medicines on consignment.
“Moderna mainly uses its affiliates for product distribution and to access the tools required to receive approval for authorized use of its products in the countries where it has offices. But Moderna has also signed CMO partnership agreements with companies in countries it has affiliates in, including France, Spain and Switzerland,” said Park. “Technology barriers for the production of mRNA-based vaccines, of which the Moderna vaccine is one, aren’t so high that CMO partnership agreements are impossible.”
GC Pharma and Hanmi Pharm are considered to be strong possible Korean CMO partners for Moderna given their manufacturing capabilities. GC Pharma signed a COVID-19 distribution agreement to manufacture 500 million doses with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) last year, and GC Pharma is also an authorized Moderna partner to distribute its COVID-19 vaccines. Hanmi Pharm earlier said that it could handle producing up to 1 billion doses of mRNA-based coronavirus vaccines at its Pyeongtaek bio plant, south of Seoul, provided that there was an agreement for a technology transfer.
This report came after the government earlier said that a Korean company would be handling the production of a certain “global company’s” COVID vaccines starting in August this year, adding that “those vaccines” were not related to Russian ones.
Moderna said that it is in discussions with the government to potentially provide 40 million or more doses of its COVID-19 vaccines. At the time of the announcement, Moderna said that potential distribution of its two-dose vaccine here could start in the second quarter.
After President Moon Jaein and the Democratic Party of Korea failed to hold on to the mayor positions in the country’s two largest cities, Seoul and Busan, in recent by-elections, and with the number of COVID infections rising, Cheong Wa Dae and the ruling party are being asked to “do something more,” such as speeding up efforts to expand the public coronavirus vaccination program.