“Demand keeps rising and it’s no longer certain that we can continue to meet the demand we’re facing even with the upgrade of our existing manufacturing site in Denmark.”
That was Rolf Sass Sorensen, a vice president at Bavarian Nordic
BAVA,
BVNRY,
which is the only company in the world that produces an approved monkeypox vaccine, in an interview with Bloomberg.
The Danish firm has warned that he was no longer certain the company could meet global demand even after it upgrades its facility in Kvistgaard.
In order to meet rising demand, Bavarian Nordic is looking at possibly outsourcing part of its production of the vaccine, including a technology transfer to a U.S producer which entails unlocking the rights to manufacture vaccines with a third-party approved partner to allow bulk production.
“We’re looking at ways to get help from partners in all the various production steps of the vaccine,” Sorensen said. “We are also investigating a tech transfer to a contract manufacturer in the US to increase capacity. We don’t have any concrete negotiations in the works with bulk producers, but we’re investigating and looking at what options there are.”
Bavarian Nordic, which makes the Jynneos smallpox vaccine, has confirmed that European production would halt while it upgrades a production site.
The Copenhagen-listed vaccine producer previously stated it would be able to fulfil all of its orders from its Danish facility and that a technology transfer would be too expensive and take too much time.
Bavarian’s securing of large scale vaccine orders and the U.S regulators’ approval to stretch the number of doses that could be administered could prove “an attractive entry point”, according to a team of Citi analysts led by Peter Verdult.
“Bavarian offers investors a vaccine pure play with earnings momentum driven by growing monkeypox vaccine orders and accelerating recovery for the travel vaccines business, and longer-term pipeline optionality around COVID/RSV efforts in COVID,” they said.
Bavarian Nordic’s half year report is due on Aug. 24.
There were 12,689 confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S. on Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a rise from 9,492 the previous week. The U.S. has more cases that have been confirmed than of the 92 other countries with recorded cases. Spain, France, Germany, Brazil and the U.K. also have cases in the thousands.
