Teva, Merck Could Support COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Efforts

Pharma giants Teva Pharmaceuticals and Merck are currently in talks about adding their significant manufacturing capabilities to COVID-19 vaccine production, though specifics have not been disclosed at this point.

Teva, the world’s largest manufacturer of generic drugs, has said it is open to potentially lending production power to help bolster supplies of authorized and soon-to-be authorized COVID-19 vaccines. The company is in discussions with companies whose coronavirus vaccines have received Emergency Use Authorization.

Teva CEO Kare Schultz said that the company has the capabilities to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines like those from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

The firm, which Schultz said would not contribute from a research standpoint if it gets involved with vaccine production, is currently working alongside the Israeli government to distribute COVID-19 shots in Israel. The Teva chief said that the company is also interested in helping with vaccine distribution in the U.S.

Merck is also in active discussions with vaccine makers, as well as in talks with governments and public health agencies, about becoming directly involved in manufacturing already-authorized vaccines.

In a surprising move, given the company’s longstanding expertise with vaccines, Merck has scrapped its own two investigational COVID-19 vaccines and is instead focusing on research and manufacturing scale-up for its two coronavirus treatments in development, MK-7110 and MK-4482 (DID, Jan. 26, 2021). — James Miessler