By Francesco Guarascio and Ludwig Burger
(Reuters) – AstraZeneca is set to enlist Germany’s IDT Biologika as a contract manufacturer of its COVID-19 vaccine, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Germany and the European Union seek to boost a delayed immunisation campaign.
IDT Biologika, based in Dessau-Rosslau in eastern Germany, produces viral vaccines for pharmaceutical companies, and has suffered a recent setback in developing its own vaccine against COVID-19.
IDT Biologika and AstraZeneca declined to comment.
IDT has previously said it was doing work for AstraZeneca on the vaccine, which the British drugmaker is co-developing with Oxford University, and one of the sources said the manufacturing contract would specify and widen the collaboration.
The other source said the contract was for 18 months and for production in Europe.
IDT’s own experimental COVID-19 vaccine, co-developed with the German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF), did not prompt the hoped-for immune reaction in early-stage testing on humans, resulting in a suspension of the trial last month.
Germany and other EU governments are under fire over a slow start to vaccinations in the EU, as deliveries from Pfizer and partner BioNTech as well as from AstraZeneca fell short of projections.
The German regional state of Saxony-Anhalt, home to IDT, said this month the company was in talk to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya institute.
One of the sources said those negotiations were ongoing.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger. Editing by Kirsti Knolle and Mark Potter)
