Everest Medicines, a biopharmaceutical company focusing on the development, manufacturing and commercialisation of innovative medicines and vaccines, announced that the first phase of its global manufacturing site dedicated to mRNA vaccine production in Jiashan, Zhejiang Province has initiated operation and successfully carried out trial production runs.

The first phase of the project, covering an area of 58,000 square meters and with an investment of more than RMB 900 million, has a set of advanced production facilities built to meet global and China GMP standards, and designed with an annual production capacity of 700 million doses of mRNA vaccines.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is still raging globally, and the evolving variants bring significant challenges. We are actively advancing the development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to better protect people's health and support China's national public policy," said Rogers Yongqing Luo, CEO, Everest Medicines. "The startup of our mRNA vaccine factory is a key step in our strategic goal of having a complete industrial value chain of research, clinical development, manufacturing and commercialisation. We will continue to develop our clinically-validated mRNA technology platform across a wide range of diseases, such as infectious diseases and cancer while preparing for commercialisation, and accelerating our path to becoming a fully-integrated biopharmaceutical company."

The company is developing an Omicron-based bivalent booster candidate, EVER-COVID19-M1.2, and plans to initiate clinical trials in China and other Everest territories next year. 

In addition, it will also develop other preventive and therapeutic vaccines against important infectious diseases and cancers by utilizing the technology platform. Among these, its mRNA rabies vaccine program has achieved preclinical proof-of-concept.

Everest Medicines' global production base is a key pharmaceutical industry project introduced by the Jiashan National Economic Development Zone. The project is in full compliance with the standards of NMPA, EMA GMP, and WHO PQ, and supports the high-quality healthcare industry in the Yangtze River Delta region.