Novavax opens its first US vaccine plant

Novavax has celebrated the opening of its new state-of-the-art vaccine production facility at the company's headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. The 5,000-square-foot, $5.0-million pilot and commercial-scale manufacturing plant will be used to produce vaccines addressing a broad range of infectious diseases. The facility will initially supply influenza vaccine for the company's current clinical programs with planned annual capacity of 10 million doses.

"The completion of this facility represents a major milestone for Novavax and a significant accomplishment for our development team," said the firm's chief executive Rahul Singhvi. "This facility is seen as a model vaccine plant for production of all of our virus-like-particle-based vaccines and will serve as a prototype for other similar local country facilities through collaborators such as GE Healthcare. It incorporates new processes that are designed to increase production yields with significantly less infrastructure and capital cost compared to current approved vaccine facilities," he added.

Unlike traditional egg-based vaccine production, which is expensive and can require large centralized manufacturing plants with complex infrastructure, the Novavax facility employs unique cell-based technology and disposable manufacturing systems which require less production infrastructure and represent a simpler and potentially more efficient approach to vaccine production, the company explained.