Sanofi and GSK have signed agreements with the Government of Canada for the supply of up to 72 million doses of an adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine, beginning in 2021.
"GSK is proud to be working in partnership with Sanofi to make this vaccine available as soon as possible in Canada," said Roger Connor, president of GSK Vaccines. "Both companies have significant R&D and manufacturing capability world-wide and are already working hard to scale up production. This announcement from the Government of Canada supports our ongoing efforts."
Both companies have vaccine manufacturing sites in Canada that are contributing to overall global COVID-19 vaccine development, and these plus their global industrial network will play a role to the production of the COVID-19 vaccine doses for Canada – as agreed today.
The companies initiated a Phase 1/2 study on September 3 with a total of 440 subjects being enrolled, and anticipate first results in early December 2020, to support the initiation of a pivotal Phase 3 study before the end of the year. If these data are sufficient for licensure application, it is planned to request regulatory approval in the first half of 2021. In parallel, Sanofi and GSK are scaling up manufacturing of the antigen and adjuvant respectively with the target of producing up to one billion doses in total per year, globally.
On September 18, Sanofi and GSK signed a final agreement with the European Commission to supply European countries with up to 300 million doses from their European industrial network. In July 2020, Sanofi and GSK announced a collaborative effort with the U.S. government to supply up to 100 million doses of their COVID-19 recombinant protein-based vaccine to meet the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed goal of making hundreds of millions of doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States as quickly as possible. The U.S. government has a further option to discuss the purchase of up to 500 million doses longer term. Both companies also agreed (subject to final contract) with the UK government to supply up to 60 million doses of recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine.
The partners plan to supply a significant portion of total worldwide available supply to the global initiative “Access to COVID‐19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator”, a global collaboration of leaders of governments, global health organizations, businesses and philanthropies to accelerate development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
Read the Sanofi statement