EC approves Valneva COVID-19 vaccine deal
The European Commission (EC) has approved an agreement for Valneva to supply up to 60 million doses of the company’s inactivated COVID-19 vaccine candidate VLA2001 over a period of two years.
As part of this deal, the EC also has an option to boost its initial purchase of VLA2001, up to a total of 60 million doses by the end of 2023.
The announcement closely follows the conclusion of advanced exploratory talks with the EC that began in January 2021.
Under the terms of the agreement, delivery of VLA2001 is expected to begin in April 2022, subject to approval by the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) human medicines committee (CHMP) – the regulator is expected to start a rolling review of the vaccine ‘shortly’.
In October 2021, Valneva reported positive Phase III results for VLA2001, with the vaccine candidate demonstrating superiority in terms of neutralising antibody titer levels against the active comparator vaccine – AstraZeneca’s AZD1222.
VLA2001 also demonstrated non-inferiority in terms of seroconversion rates as well as a ‘significantly better’ tolerability profile.
“We are grateful to the European Commission for its support and are eager to help address the ongoing pandemic. We continue to receive messages from people across the world who are waiting for an inactivated vaccine,” said Thomas Lingelbach, chief executive officer of Valneva.
“We are deeply committed to bringing an alternative vaccine solution to the market as quickly as possible and continue to work tirelessly to achieve that. Our Phase 3 results confirmed the advantages often associated with inactivated vaccines and we continue to believe that our differentiated vaccine candidate could make an important contribution to the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.
10th November 2021
