Kaneka Eurogentec says the investment will create a production capacity approximately five times higher than at its plant in Liège, Belgium.

Contract development manufacturing organization (CDMO) Kaneka Eurogentec, an affiliate of Kaneka Corporation, provides offerings including plasmid DNA (pDNA), recombinant proteins, and oligonucleotide services.

In 2020, the company started production services for messenger RNA (mRNA) and the $15 million investment aims to scale-up capacity and expand its CDMO business with operations expected to begin from the end of this year.

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According to Kaneka, the expansion has been driven by global demand for mRNA vaccines and therapeutics. The COVID-19 pandemic thrusted mRNA into the spotlight and while COVID-19 pandemic-related orders for vaccines drop in size – as experienced by the likes of Sartorius, Danaher Corporation, and Catalent –  the modality can be applied to other therapeutics such as genetic diseases and cancer.

The firm predicts demand for mRNA production will rise dramatically due to the advanced development of pipelines worldwide.

In December 2020, Inovio Pharmaceuticals partnered with Kaneka to support the production of its COVID-19 pDNA-based vaccine candidate, INO-4800. The CDMO joined the likes of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Richter-Helm BioLogics, and Ology Biosciences as a third-party manufacturer for the vaccine candidate.

In October 2022, Inovio decided to discontinue its internally funded efforts to develop INO-4800 as a COVID-19 booster vaccine due to global demand for COVID-19 vaccines, market landscape, and a review of its portfolio.

“We continue to believe that our DNA medicine technology has attributes that could be beneficial to a heterologous COVID-19 booster vaccine,” said Jacqueline Shea, CEO, and president of Inovio.

“However, our assessment of the current global demand for COVID-19 vaccines, changes in regulatory timelines and requirements, diminishing government financial support, and the overall growing uncertainty related to opportunities for heterologous booster vaccines have resulted in our decision to discontinue internal funding efforts to develop INO-4800 as a heterologous booster vaccine.”