Moderna, EU conclude advanced talks to supply COVID-19 vaccine candidate

(Reuters) - Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA) said on Monday it has concluded advanced talks with the European Union to supply 80 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, which is currently in late-stage testing.

The potential agreement provides for an option for member states to buy an additional 80 million doses of mRNA-1273 for a total of up to 160 million doses, the company said, without disclosing the financial terms of the pact.

The drug developer is the fifth company with which the EU https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1513 has concluded talks, after Sanofi-GSK (NYSE: GSK), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), CureVac (NASDAQ: CVAC) and the signing of an advance purchase agreement with AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN).

Moderna said it was working with manufacturing partners like Lonza Group AG of Switzerland and Laboratorios Farmacéuticos Rovi SA(NASDAQ: ROVI) of Spain to produce the vaccine outside the United States.

Moderna, which is one of the handful of companies with vaccine candidates in late-stage testing, also said it was on track to complete enrollment of about 30,000 participants in the study in September.

Earlier this month, the company signed a pact with the United States to supply 100 million doses of the potential COVID-19 vaccine for around $1.5 billion.

Moderna on Monday reiterated it was scaling up global manufacturing to be able to deliver about 500 million doses per year and possibly up to 1 billion doses per year, beginning in 2021.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

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