Global partner to help manufacture one billion doses of Moderna’s mRNA coronavirus vaccine

Scaling up millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine is a huge step in knocking down the pandemic, and a 10-year strategic plan between Cambridge biotech company Moderna and Swiss company Lonza aims to accomplish that goal. Moderna’s mRNA coronavirus vaccine has shown promise in early studies, and the company announced in early May it will partner with Lonza to enable manufacturing of up to one billion doses per year of the vaccine. The first batches of the messenger ribonucleic acid vaccine, called mRNA-1273, are set to be manufactured at Lonza’s United States suites in June, according to Moderna. Over time, more production sites at Lonza’s many worldwide facilities will be established to make up to a billion doses a year.