Emergent will carry out large-scale manufacturing of drug substance for the vaccine candidate at its Baltimore Bayview facility. Credit: Shutterstock.

(J&J) has expanded its partnership with the US Department for Health and Human Service (HSS)鈥檚 Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to commit more than $1bn to co-fund research and development (R&D), as well as clinical testing, of Covid-19 vaccines.

This builds upon an existing partnership between J&J and BARDA to develop anti-viral drugs against the novel coronavirus. This part of the partnership will also receive additional funding; the precise amount was not disclosed.

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As part of the new deal, J&J will leverage its subsidiary Janssen鈥檚 proprietary vaccine platform, AdVac , and expand its manufacturing capabilities to be able to supply one billion doses of a vaccine globally.

J&J chairman and CEO Alex Gorsky said: 鈥淭he world is facing an urgent public health crisis and we are committed to doing our part to make a COVID-19 vaccine available and affordable globally as quickly as possible.

鈥淎s the world鈥檚 largest healthcare company, we feel a deep responsibility to improve the health of people around the world every day.

鈥淛&J is well positioned through our combination of scientific expertise, operational scale and financial strength to bring our resources in collaboration with others to accelerate the fight against this pandemic.鈥�

Simultaneous to the BARDA partnership announcement, J&J announced it had chosen its lead vaccine candidate, as well two back-up vaccines to move into the first manufacturing steps. These candidates were developed in collaboration with Harvard Medical School鈥檚 Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center using Janssen鈥檚 AdVac and PER.C6 technologies.

J&J chief scientific officer and executive committee vice-chairman Paul Stoffels added: 鈥淲e greatly value the US Government鈥檚 confidence and support for our R&D efforts.

鈥淲e are very pleased to have identified a lead vaccine candidate from the constructs we have been working on since January.

鈥淲e are moving on an accelerated timeline toward Phase I human clinical trials at the latest by September 2020 and, supported by the global production capability that we are scaling up in parallel to this testing, we expect a vaccine could be ready for emergency use in early 2021.鈥�