On Aug. 7, 2020, Novavax and Takeda Pharmaceutical announced a partnership for the development, manufacturing and commercialization of NVX-CoV2373, Novavax COVID-19 vaccine candidate, in Japan. NVX-CoV2373 is a stable, prefusion protein made using Novavax recombinant protein nanoparticle technology and includes Novavax proprietary Matrix-M adjuvant.

Takeda will receive funding from the Government of Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) to support the technology transfer, establishment of infrastructure and scale-up of manufacturing. Takeda anticipated the capacity to manufacture over 250 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine per year.