TARRYTOWN — Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has been awarded a $450 million agreement through the federal authorities to supply tens of thousands of doses of a capacity COVID-19 treatment, it was announced Tuesday.
Under the agreement with the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services, the Tarrytown-based pharmaceutical giant, with its manufacturing operations in Rensselaer County, will produce among 70,000 and three hundred,000 doses of REGN-COV2, the capacity anti-viral antibody treatment this is nonetheless present process scientific trials.
The authorities will own all doses produced at some point of the undertaking. If the medical trials succeed and the Food and Drug Administration approves the remedy or authorizes its emergency use, the antibody cocktail can be made without delay to be had to COVID-19 patients inside the United States. Regeneron stated the primary doses can be to be had by using the quit of the summer time.
The agreement is the first under the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed, a government attempt to make potential COVID-19 treatments to be had to the general public as soon as they're geared up. A Maryland-based vaccine manufacturer, Novavax, became additionally given a $1.6 billion contract despite by no means previously having added a product to marketplace, the New York Times stated.
The REGN-COV2 treatment is undergoing several medical trials; the task will run simultaneously with the ones trials, which HHS stated "shaves months off the conventional product development timeline."
Two trials are examining the cocktail's use for the treatment of COVID-19, whilst a 3rd trial explores whether it is able to prevent the virus.
If the FDA approves the treatment, the government-owned doses may be made available to Americans for free of charge, HHS stated. Health practitioners will nonetheless be capable of price a affected person's insurer for administering the drug.
"We made the selection early on to begin big-scale production at our personal chance in an effort to make sure that product could be available immediately if our clinical trials prove a hit and an Emergency Use Authorization is granted," Regeneron CEO Leonard S. Schleifer said in a statement. "This manufacturing and supply agreement with BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) and the Department of Defense could assist REGN-COV2 attain many human beings fast, with a bit of luck helping to exchange the course of this deadly and nevertheless-raging pandemic."
Regeneron employs three,000 humans at its Capital Region centers. Shares (NASDAQ: REGN) were up 3.40 percent, or $21.33, to $648.Fifty eight in mid-afternoon trading.
A Regeneron spokesperson said the deal could not affect the variety of personnel at its Rensselaer County facilities.
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