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Japan scraps 140 million dose order of Novavax COVID vaccine, Takeda reveals

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Takeda Pharmaceutical in the Drug Discovery & Development Pharma 50In 2021, Takeda (TYO:4502) announced that it would manufacture 150 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from NovaVax (Nasdaq:NVAX). But the company has disclosed that the Japanese government has canceled the remaining order for the Nuvaxovid vaccine.

The Japanese government acquired 8.24 million vaccine doses but said it would cancel the remaining order for the remaining 141.76 million doses owing to low demand.

Takeda and Novavax are collaborating on developing a new vaccine optimized for future variants in 2023.

Novavax currently has an omicron vaccine candidate in a Phase 3 trial.

The company has data demonstrating that its adjuvanted NVX-CoV2373 vaccine prompts a robust immune response when used as a booster and is effective against forward drift variants of SARS-CoV-2.

Novavax plans to provide a monovalent or bivalent vaccine for the 2023–2024 vaccination season based on FDA feedback. The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBAC) recently voted unanimously to harmonize the COVID vaccine.

Japan’s decision to cancel the order for the Novavax vaccine won’t have a material impact on Takeda’s finances, and the company has yet to make any changes to their full-year consolidated forecasts for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023.

Novavax’s valuation has plummeted since February 12, 2021, when it hit $290.18. It is currently trading at less than $10 per share.

Takeda also produced Moderna’s (Nasdaq:MRNA) COVID-19 vaccine for the Japanese market until the middle of 2022. At that point, the companies announced that Moderna would be responsible for marketing authorization of the Spikevax vaccine in Japan starting August 1, 2022.

Takeda projected that the revenue from COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing, which included the Spikevax vaccine, will be in the ballpark of ¥50.0 billion in FY2022.

Takeda recently acquired Nimbus Therapeutics’ subsidiary, Nimbus Lakshmi, which includes its tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2) program.

 

Filed Under: Infectious Disease
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About The Author

Brian Buntz

The pharma and biotech editor of WTWH Media, Brian is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years of experience covering an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, drug discovery and development and medical devices. Before coming to WTWH, he served as content director focused on connected devices at Informa. In addition, Brian covered the medical device sector for 10 years at UBM. At Qmed, he overhauled the brand’s news coverage and helped to grow the site’s traffic volume dramatically. He had previously held managing editor roles on two of the company’s medical device technology publications. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email at [email protected]

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