COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Bavarian Nordic said on Thursday it could supply 13 million doses of its mpox vaccine by the end of 2025, up from a previous forecast of 10 million doses, and is exploring options to significantly expand its capacity.
The Danish biotech company said it had also identified measures that could boost supply by a further 50 million doses within the next 12-18 months, subject to regulatory approvals and market demand.
“It depends first and foremost on demand. If the demand is there and the other conditions are in place, we have the opportunity to increase by another 50 million doses,” Bavarian’s head of investor relations Rolf Sass Sorensen said.
The World Health Organization declared mpox a global health emergency last month but efforts to curb the spread of the disease have been hampered by a lack of vaccines.
Sorensen said supply also hinges on ongoing discussions about collaborations with partners in Africa and elsewhere regarding the transfer of manufacturing, alongside the adoption of other methods and technologies with a higher yield.
“It could perhaps be that you get help to make fill-and-finish,” Sorensen said.
Bavarian said certain existing orders for mpox vaccines based on contracts with the U.S. government would be pushed back to 2025 from 2024 in order to meet other market needs.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, the epicentre of the latest mpox outbreak, received its first batch of mpox vaccines last week.
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen and Stine Jacobsen, editing by Essi Lehto, Terje Solsvik and Christina Fincher)
