(Reuters) – Takeda Pharmaceutical will manufacture and sell up to 250 million doses of Novavax Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate in Japan every year, the two companies said on Friday.
To ramp up production, Takeda will get funding from Japan’s Health, Labour and Welfare ministry, the companies said.
“Takeda’s leading position in Japan, technical expertise, regulatory know-how and manufacturing capacity make the company an ideal partner to further expand the global availability of NVX-CoV2373,” said Stanley Erck, chief executive officer of Novavax.
Takeda will handle the regulatory approvals in Japan, while Novavax will get a part of the vaccine proceeds as well as payments if certain development and commercial milestones are met.
(Reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
