GRAND RAPIDS — Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing Inc. in Grand Rapids has signed a deal with Danish vaccine company Bavarian Nordic to fill and finish a smallpox and monkeypox vaccine.
The agreement, supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority, was intended to increase domestic vaccine supply.
“We are happy to play our part and are proud to be in a position to support Bavarian Nordic and the U.S. Government with the monkeypox outbreak response,” Tom Ross, president and CEO at Grand River Aseptic, said in a statement. “GRAM is putting forth all efforts possible to accelerate the manufacturing of the vaccine.”
The Department of Health and Human Services in July said it had ordered another 2.5 million doses of Bavarian Nordic’s JYNNEOS vaccine in response to the monkeypox outbreak and to strengthen the country’s smallpox preparedness. The July order came after a prior order two weeks earlier for 2.5 million doses that Strategic National Stockpile expects to receive over the next year.
GRAM earlier this week announced that it completed installation of two new fill lines in Grand Rapids that triple capacity.
Over the past two years, the company worked on Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. Reduced demand for the COVID-19 vaccine led GRAM to implement layoffs in June. The company has declined to publicly identify how many jobs related to the COVID-19 vaccine production were cut.
