Tonix Pharmaceutical Holding Corp (NASDAQ:TNXP) has announced that FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies will be its manufacturing partner for its TNX-1800 coronavirus vaccine candidate.
Tonix enter manufacturing partnership for COVID-19 vaccine
According to the agreement, FUJIFILM Diosynth will offer contract manufacturing as well as development services supporting the manufacture of TNX-1800 for supply for clinical trials. The company will come up with a manufacturing process, produce, and stock TNX-1800 at Tonix’s clinical development site at the FUJIFILM Diosynth’s College Station in Texas. The FDB manufacturing site is an ultramodern facility that has been designed to run a responsive and flexible contract manufacturing site. It supports manufacturing on several scales for candidates going through the clinical process to commercialization.
Seth Lederman, the CEO and President of the company indicated that they were delighted to partner with FUJIFILM Diosynth, which is a leading pharmaceutical development and manufacturing company. The CEO indicated that the live replication of orthopoxvirus vaccines has the potential to scale for supply to large markets. This is because the estimated vaccine dose is quite low, and it is possible to offer vaccines with around 100 doses for every glass vial. The partnership will benefit Tonix as it will take advantage of FDB’s top technical experience in development as well as commercial cGMP manufacturing.
FDB to use expertise in vaccinia development to deliver COVID-19 vaccine
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies’ CEO and President Martin Meeson indicated that the company was excited to be the manufacturing partner of Tonix for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. He added that the FDB team’s expertise on the manufacture of vaccinia could be useful in the manufacture of horsepox vaccines. Meeson affirmed that the company can offer large scale manufacture of vaccines to meet demands during the pandemic.
In February this year, Tonix entered a strategic partnership with Southern Research supporting TNX-1800 development against COVID-19. The development of the vaccine candidate is based on the company’s novel horsepox vaccine platform, which Tonix has been using to develop TNX-801, which is a potential smallpox vaccine.
