AstraZeneca Expand COVID-19 Vaccine Production in the Netherlands

HALIX B.V. announced it has signed an agreement with AstraZeneca AB for large-scale commercial drug substance manufacture of AZD1222, the adenovirus vector-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, at its state-of-the-art cGMP facility at the Leiden Bio Science Park in the Netherlands.

Alex Huybens, Chief Operations Officer of HALIX, stated in a press release: “Building on the solid foundations made with the University of Oxford, it’s our pleasure to expand our manufacturing support of AZD1222 with AstraZeneca. Through the consortium, the partners are bringing their collective expertise and manufacturing capabilities to support vaccine production and combat this evolving crisis.”

The AZD1222 experimental vaccine is made from a virus (ChAdOx1), which is a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus), that has been genetically changed so that it is impossible for it to grow in humans.