Catalent has received a project grant as part of a consortium looking to evaluate, develop, and manufacture thermo-stable and cold-chain-independent nano-pharmaceutical virosome-based vaccine candidates. Currently, 90% of existing vaccines are cold-chain dependent, and the goal of the consortium is to develop a scalable manufacturing process for vaccines that are stable and temperature independent.

A total project fund of EUR 5.3 million ($5.7 million) has been awarded as part of Horizon 2020, the European Union research and innovation framework program, with additional funding of up to EUR 3.1 million ($3.3 million) from the Swiss State Secretariat Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) for the Swiss-based consortium partners, resulting in a total project grant of EUR 8.4 million ($8.9 million). The EU Horizon 2020 project is named MACIVIVA, which stands for “Manufacturing process for Cold-chain Independent Virosome-based Vaccines.” The project duration is in total 3.5 years and brings together expertise in the field of virosome vaccines, manufacturing, spray-drying, freeze-drying and analytical techniques from the pharmaceutical industry.

Catalent's Swindon, UK facility will receive a portion of the total fund with the balance being distributed amongst the other consortium partners: Mymetics SA (Switzerland), Mymetics BV (Netherlands); Chimera Biotech Gmbh (Germany); Upperton Ltd. (UK); and Bachem AG (Switzerland).

Source: Catalent