Vaxcyte inks up to $1B deal for fill-finish at Thermo Fisher's N.C. facility

As North Carolina’s biopharma hotbed enjoys an onshoring investment rush, clinical-stage vaccine developer Vaxcyte is the latest company to put down manufacturing roots in the state.

As with other drugmakers who’ve embarked on North Carolina production projects in recent months, Vaxcyte plans to leverage the extensive CDMO capacity offered there.

Vaxcyte is paying Thermo Fisher Scientific up to $1 billion to access vaccine fill-finish capacity at the CDMO’s production facility in Greenville, North Carolina. Vaxcyte positioned the deal—which covers the biotech’s pipeline of broad-spectrum pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV)—as a “long-term U.S. commercial manufacturing commitment.”

Vaxcyte has yet to win any FDA approval, specifying in a press release this week that the Thermo Fisher pact forms part of its long-term commercial supply strategy.

The company’s lead candidate, a 31-valent PCV asset coded VAX-31, is presently advancing to a phase 3 program in adults and running through a phase 2 study in infants, Vaxcyte noted in its release. Deeper in the company’s pipeline are a 24-valent PCV candidate known as VAX-24, a prophylactic vaccine for group A strep infections dubbed VAX-A1, and VAX-GI, which is being developed to prevent shigella.

“The decision to significantly expand our fill-finish manufacturing capacity in the United States represents an effort to expand our end-to-end supply strategy and align with the increasing focus on domestic biomanufacturing,” Grant Pickering, Vaxcyte’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement.

Vaxcyte’s North Carolina investment comes as many of its biopharma peers have also elected to do business in the Tar Heel State. Aside from drug developers themselves, the state also boasts a sizeable population of contract manufacturing and development organizations.

Late last month, Fujifilm Biotechnologies cut the ribbon on a $3.2 billion biologics plant in Holly Springs, about 100 miles west of Thermo Fisher’s Greenville site. The CDMO facility is kicking off operations with eight 20,000-liter bioreactors for drug substance and drug product manufacturing—Fujifilm planning to double the site’s capacity with another eight bioreactors by 2028.

Fujifilm has already attracted significant business at the new plant, securing lucrative, long-term manufacturing contracts with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, and, most recently, argenx.