Moderna, ROVI Expand Collaboration to Boost mRNA Vaccines

Moderna and ROVI recently entered into a long-term collaboration to increase capacities for the compounding, aseptic filling, inspection, and manufacturing of mRNA vaccines and medicines over the next ten years.

The agreement includes a series of investments to increase manufacturing capacity across ROVI’s facilities in Spain. The companies can also utilize ROVI’s platform to service future Moderna mRNA vaccine candidates and help produce the company’s current COVID-19 vaccine.

So far, Moderna and its partners have increased capacity globally and supplied over 500 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. In October 2021, the company announced a new state-of-the-art mRNA facility in Africa to produce even more doses of mRNA vaccines annually.

“ROVI has been a pivotal partner in supporting the manufacturing of our COVID-19 mRNA vaccine for countries outside of the US, and this long-term agreement expands our partnership and allows for further scale-up for future mRNA medicines," Juan Andres, Moderna’s chief technical operations and quality officer, said in the announcement.

Moderna and ROVI expect to finalize agreement details in the first quarter of 2022.

ROVI specializes in the research, development, contract manufacturing, and marketing of small molecules and biological specialties. The company has subsidiaries in Portugal, Germany, the UK, Italy, France, and Poland.

Additionally, ROVI has a diversified marketing portfolio of over 40 products.

Moderna and ROVI first collaborated in July 2020 for commercial fill-finish manufacturing of Moderna’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate at ROVI’s Spain facility.

As part of the initial agreement, ROVI provided filling and packaging capacity by procuring a new production line and equipment for compounding, filling, automatic visual inspection, and labeling to support the production of hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine to principal supply markets outside of the US.

Additionally, ROVI hired additional staffing required to support manufacturing operations and production.

In the most recent announcement, Juan López-Belmonte Encina, chairman and CEO of ROVI, stated that the company is “delighted” to expand its collaboration with Moderna and become a long-term manufacturing partner.