Vaxart Announces Acquisition of Second GMP Manufacturing Facility
Vaxart, Inc. has entered into an agreement with Kindred Bioscience, Inc. for the purchase of KindredBio’s manufacturing equipment and sublease of its GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) manufacturing facility in Burlingame, CA, giving Vaxart control of its second GMP manufacturing facility. The transaction closed Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021, and Vaxart expects the facility to be operational for GMP production in Q1 2022.
“This acquisition gives us greater flexibility to manage our manufacturing needs by allowing Vaxart to exercise more control over our quality control program and the timing of our manufacturing activities,” said Andrei Floroiu, Vaxart’s Chief Executive Officer. “Vaxart is developing not only COVID-19 oral tablet and norovirus vaccines but also oral tablet vaccines for other diseases using our proprietary delivery platform. With this second plant, we expect to have the clinical-scale manufacturing capacity necessary to rapidly develop our multiple programs in parallel.”
Vaxart’s existing South San Francisco GMP manufacturing facility and the Burlingame facility will manufacture materials for Vaxart’s COVID-19 and norovirus oral vaccine tablets. Vaxart recently began a Phase 2 study of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate and has several Phase 1 studies of its norovirus vaccine candidate underway.
The Burlingame facility, which can produce biologic drug substances at up to 500-L bioreactor scale, has been used by Vaxart since April 2020 to produce COVID-19 and norovirus vaccine clinical trial materials. It will also provide GMP manufacturing capacity to support the development of additional candidates in Vaxart’s vaccine portfolio.
Vaxart is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a range of oral recombinant vaccines based on its proprietary delivery platform. Vaxart vaccines are designed to be administered using tablets that can be stored and shipped without refrigeration and eliminate the risk of needle-stick injury. Vaxart believes that its proprietary tablet vaccine delivery platform is suitable to deliver recombinant vaccines, positioning the company to develop oral versions of currently marketed vaccines and to design recombinant vaccines for new indications. Vaxart’s development programs currently include tablet vaccines designed to protect against coronavirus, norovirus, seasonal influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), as well as a therapeutic vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV), Vaxart’s first immune-oncology indication. Vaxart has filed broad domestic and international patent applications covering its proprietary technology and creations for oral vaccination using adenovirus and TLR3 agonists.
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