On Sept. 14, 2020, Dynavax Technologies announced a commercial partnership for the supply of Dynavax’s CpG 1018 adjuvant for use in Valneva’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate, VLA2001.

Valneva separately announced an agreement with the UK government to provide up to 190 million doses of VLA20011 over a five year period. Dynavax will supply CpG 1018 to produce up to 100 million doses of vaccine in 2021. Valneva has the option to purchase up to an additional 90 million doses through 2025.

Valneva expects VLA2001 to enter clinical studies by the end of 2020 and to potentially reach regulatory approval in the second half of 2021. This commercial supply partnership follows Valneva and Dynavax’s initial collaboration to advance COVID-19 vaccine development, announced in April 2020.

VLA2001 is a Vero-cell based, highly purified inactivated vaccine candidate against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leveraging the manufacturing technology for Valneva’s Japanese encephalitis vaccine. The Company has designed a process that largely uses this platform in regards to upstream- and downstream process steps as plug-and-play with moderate adjustments. The process includes inactivation with BPL to preserve the native structure of the S protein.

The combination with CpG 1018 is expected to induce a strong immune response and has the potential to generate high titers of neutralizing antibodies as well as a polarized Th1 response. VLA2001 is expected to conform with standard cold chain requirements (2 degrees to 8 degrees centigrade).