French drugmaker Sanofi, which is fighting development delays with its own vaccine candidates against COVID-19, is handing over more of its vaccine production facilities to industrial rivals and teaming up with Johnson & Johnson to produce millions of doses of its rival coronavirus vaccine.
Johnson & Johnson is the second competitor to enter into an agreement with Sanofi to use its facilities, an unusual collaboration for the competitive industry that is now under pressure from governments to accelerate vaccine production against the devastating global pandemic.
Sanofi chief executive Paul Hudson said the deal announced by the company on Monday showed his “commitment to the collective effort to end this crisis as soon as possible.”
Sanofi continues to give priority to developing its own two coronavirus vaccination programs, Hudson said in a company statement.
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But “where we have the right manufacturing capability, we act to show solidarity in the industry and continue our part in the fight against COVID-19,” he added.
Sanofi said the Marcy l’Etoile vaccine manufacturing plant near the city of Lyon would formulate and fill bottles of the single vaccine for Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen companies.
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Sanofi will merge the vaccine ingredients that Janssen sends there and fill bottles and then send the full bottles to Janssen for packaging. The French factory is expected to produce about 12 million doses per month, from the second half of this year.
Sanofi had previously announced that its facilities in Frankfurt, Germany, could help bottle and package 125 million vaccine doses for the competitive partnership of Pfizer-BioNTech.
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Sanofi’s latest announcement was quickly trumpeted by French President Emmanuel Macron. His government has urged Sanofi to use its facilities to help make vaccines from its competitors, due to the huge global demand for vaccines and supply problems.
“We must work together to accelerate vaccine production with industrial partnerships,” Macron tweeted.