Everest Medicines, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacturing and commercialization of innovative medicines and vaccines, announced that the first phase of its global manufacturing site dedicated to mRNA vaccine production in Jiashan, Zhejiang Province has initiated operation and successfully carried out trial production runs.
The first phase of the project, covering an area of 58,000 square meters and with an investment of more than RMB 900 million, has a set of advanced production facilities built to meet global and China GMP standards, and designed with an annual production capacity of 700 million doses of mRNA vaccines.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is still raging globally, and the evolving variants bring significant challenges. We are actively advancing the development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to better protect people's health and support China's national public policy," said Rogers Yongqing Luo, Chief Executive Officer of Everest Medicines. "The startup of our mRNA vaccine factory is a key step in our strategic goal of having a complete industrial value chain of research, clinical development, manufacturing and commercialization. We will continue to develop our clinically-validated mRNA technology platform across a wide range of diseases, such as infectious diseases and cancer, while preparing for commercialization, and accelerating our path to becoming a fully-integrated biopharmaceutical company."
In September 2021, Everest Medicines reached a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement with Providence Therapeutics Holdings Inc. ("Providence") to advance mRNA vaccines and therapies. Since then, Everest has made significant progress, including industrial scale technology transfer of its mRNA platform, localized processing and analytical testing, and direct procurement with raw material suppliers, which will enable the company to independently develop and produce mRNA vaccines and innovative drugs. In a head-to-head Phase II clinical study conducted by Providence, our monovalent COVID-19 vaccine candidate PTX-COVID19-B was statistically non-inferior to Pfizer/BioNTech's Comirnaty® in terms of safety and efficacy.
By localizing this important and advanced mRNA technology platform, Everest will gain long-term growth momentum. The company is developing an Omicron-based bivalent booster candidate, EVER-COVID19-M1.2, and plans to initiate clinical trials in China and other Everest territories next year. In addition, it will also develop other preventive and therapeutic vaccines against important infectious diseases and cancers by utilizing the technology platform. Among these, its mRNA rabies vaccine program has achieved preclinical proof-of-concept.
Everest Medicines' global production base is a key pharmaceutical industry project introduced by the Jiashan National Economic Development Zone. The project is in full compliance with the standards of NMPA, EMA GMP, and WHO PQ, and supports the high-quality healthcare industry in the Yangtze River Delta region.
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