(Bloomberg) -- Bavarian Nordic A/S agreed to a deal with the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India Pvt, to make the Danish biotech firm’s mpox shot.
The company will transfer technology to the Serum Institute so the vaccine producer can supply shots for the Indian market, Bavarian said in a statement Monday. It will also allow the Serum Institute to carry out contract manufacturing for Bavarian to expand its global capacity.
The license agreement with the Serum Institute is based on a profit-sharing model with no associated upfront or milestone payments, Bavarian said.
Bavarian shares fell as much as 3% in early trading. The stock is up about 9% since the start of the year.
More than 65,700 cases of mpox have been reported this year, mostly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with about 1,200 people dying from the disease in the African country. Children have borne the brunt of mpox.
A mutated strain of the mpox-causing monkeypox virus has been detected in several other African countries as well as in the US, UK and Thailand. The variant seems to spread faster through sexual contact and is related to a more virulent strain of the disease, with a higher mortality rate.
Bavarian is one of the few vaccine manufacturers with an mpox shot. Its vaccines played a pivotal role in the control of the disease during an earlier outbreak that spread around the globe in 2022. Global complacency — and the fact that the disease kept spreading mainly in African countries — meant a second global emergency was declared earlier this year.
(Updates with share price in fourth paragraph.)
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