Andover's Pfizer Plant Could Participate in Vaccine Production

ANDOVER, MA – Pfizer’s manufacturing plant in Andover has been selected as one of three U.S. locations that the pharmaceutical giant would use to produce a coronavirus vaccine if it proves effective in testing, the company announced on Wednesday.

In a press release, Pfizer announced that the first participants in the U.S. have been dosed in the Phase ½ clinical trial for the BNT162 vaccine program as part of joint manufacturing effort between Pfizer and BioNTech, which is based in Germany. The trial, the company said, is a part of a global development program and the dosing of the first human participant took place last week in Germany.

The phase ½ study is designed to determine the safety and optimal dose level of four vaccine candidates evaluated in a single study. The first U.S. participants were dosed Tuesday at medical schools at the University of Maryland and New York University. More dosing will soon begin at the University of Rochester and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

The next stage of testing is set to include 360 healthy people in two age groups beginning with a 18-55 age bracket and then 65-85. Pfizer said that the older age group will only be tested once the younger age group has been tested safely. If approved, the vaccine would then be produced for a global supply.

“With our unique and robust clinical study program underway, starting in Europe and now the U.S., we look forward to advancing quickly and collaboratively with our partners at BioNTech and regulatory authorities to bring a safe and efficacious vaccine to the patients who need it most,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive officer, said in the release, adding that it took four months for the companies to shift from pre-clinical testing to human testing.

Pfizer announced that the scale of the product should allow for the production of millions of vaccine doses this year and hundreds of millions of doses in 2021. The Andover site would be used for drug substance manufacturing as part of the project, the company said. Manufacturing sites in Missouri and Michigan have also been selected as initial production sites with more expected to be added if vaccine production ramps up.