Kindred Biosciences Announces COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Agreement with Vaxart

Kindred Biosciences, Inc. announced it has entered into an agreement with Vaxart, Inc. for the manufacture of Vaxart’s oral vaccine candidate for COVID-19.

“We are proud to be contributing toward the effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. We look forward to working with Vaxart to bring this innovative technology to patients as quickly as possible,” said KindredBio’s Chief Executive Officer, Richard Chin, M.D. “This marks an important step in the development of our contract manufacturing business, which has the potential to help fund our promising pipeline.”

Under the terms of the agreement, KindredBio will provide manufacturing services from its state-of-the-art biological development and cGMP manufacturing facility in Burlingame, CA. There, KindredBio will produce the candidate vaccine bulk drug substance under Good Manufacturing Practices, and provide it to Vaxart to be formulated into a vaccine tablet to be taken by mouth instead of by needle injection. KindredBio will manufacture the vaccine for clinical trials beginning in the second half of 2020.

“We are pleased to be partnering with Kindred Biosciences in the development of our oral COVID-19 vaccine candidate,” said Vaxart’s Chief Executive Officer, Wouter Latour, M.D. “We believe our novel approach utilizing a room temperature-stable tablet offers important logistical advantages in widespread oral vaccination, and that KindredBio with its state-of-the-art manufacturing plants is an ideal partner to realize our vision.”

KindredBio’s core expertise includes protein engineering, cell line development, master cell banking, process development, assay development, stability testing, and cGMP clinical and commercial manufacturing from 50 litres to 2,000 litres. The biologics team comprises experts in product development, manufacturing, quality control and quality assurance personnel, and is supported by a strong project management organization.

KindredBio’s contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) activities are managed by a wholly owned subsidiary, Centaur Biopharmaceutical Services.