How Novavax Won $1.6 Billion to Make a Coronavirus Vaccine (original) (raw)
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How a Struggling Company Won $1.6 Billion to Make a Coronavirus Vaccine
Novavax just received the Trump administration’s largest vaccine contract. In the Maryland company’s 33-year history, it has never brought a vaccine to market.
The coronavirus vaccine Novavax, a small biotech company, has developed is now in safety trials. Results are expected this month.Credit...Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Published July 16, 2020Updated June 14, 2021
In late February, as the coronavirus spread around the world, Dr. Richard Hatchett, the head of an international nonprofit that gives money to vaccine developers, got on an important call to discuss vaccine candidates after his plane touched down at London’s Heathrow Airport.
Executives from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped found and finance the nonprofit, were on the line, enthusiastic about Novavax, a small biotech company they thought had the potential to develop a vaccine against the virus — fast.
Although the company, based in Gaithersburg, Md., had never brought a vaccine to market in its 33-year history, these experts were optimistic about its technology, which uses moth cells to pump out crucial molecules at a much faster rate than typical vaccines — a major advantage in a pandemic.
Dr. Hatchett’s organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, would go on to invest 388millioninthecompany’scoronavirusvaccine.Withthatpowerfulbacking,NovavaxmadeanaggressivepushtotheU.S.government.Thecompany’seffortpaidofflastweekwhenOperationWarpSpeed,theTrumpadministration’sefforttohurrycoronavirusvaccinestothemarket,[gaveNovavax388 million in the company’s coronavirus vaccine. With that powerful backing, Novavax made an aggressive push to the U.S. government. The company’s effort paid off last week when Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to hurry coronavirus vaccines to the market, [gave Novavax 388millioninthecompany’scoronavirusvaccine.Withthatpowerfulbacking,NovavaxmadeanaggressivepushtotheU.S.government.Thecompany’seffortpaidofflastweekwhenOperationWarpSpeed,theTrumpadministration’sefforttohurrycoronavirusvaccinestothemarket,gaveNovavax1.6 billion, the largest award to date. The company’s stock surged 30 percent.
It was a dramatic turnaround for a little-known company that, just one year earlier, had been on the verge of collapse. One of its leading vaccine candidates — to prevent a deadly virus in infants — had failed for the second time in three years. The company’s stock was trading so low that it risked being removed from the Nasdaq. Looking for cash, it sold its manufacturing facilities. Word spread around the small world of Maryland biotech that Novavax might be closing soon.
Novavax’s good fortune may appear puzzling, given its track record and the air of secrecy surrounding Operation Warp Speed. But for those in the insular biotech world where connections matter, it is far less surprising. In the face of a deadly pandemic that is devastating the economy, the government is placing huge bets on vaccines and treatments that could enable a return to some semblance of normal life.
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