Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings Inc. and Catalent, Inc. announced on May 04th a partnership to support the expected manufacture of Arcturus’ COVID-19 mRNA vaccine candidate (LUNAR-COV19), intended to protect against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. LUNAR-COV19 utilizes Arcturus’ self-transcribing and replicating mRNA (STARR™) technology and the Company’s LUNAR® lipid-mediated delivery to produce an extraordinarily low dose, potential single shot COVID-19 vaccine. The manufacture of LUNAR-COV19 at Catalent’s state-of-the-art drug substance biomanufacturing facility in Madison, Wisconsin will support human clinical studies and, if successful, commercialization of the vaccine. The COVID-19 vaccine program will take advantage of the facility’s flex-suite, a cGMP manufacturing suite that can produce batches at multiple scales and support Arcturus’ proprietary mRNA manufacturing process. The partnership will combine Arcturus’ low-dose STARR™ mRNA vaccine technology with Catalent’s scalable cGMP manufacturing capabilities to produce millions of doses of LUNAR-COV19 mRNA in 2020 and potentially 100s of millions of doses annually for worldwide use. Preparations for this program have already begun at the Madison facility, and both organizations are committed to meeting the global demand on unprecedented manufacturing timelines. Technology transfer will be completed this month and manufacture of the first cGMP batches of LUNAR-COV19 mRNA are expected to be completed by June 2020.
For further information, see Globenewswire (https://www.cmocro.com/news_detail/Arcturus+Therapeutics+and+Catalent+Announce+Partnership+to+M/488017/index.html)
