Colorado's Own CordenPharma Behind Vital Piece Of Moderna's COVID Vaccine
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) - Colorado pharmaceutical company CordenPharma is producing a necessary piece of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna put in a request for emergency use authorization with the Food and Drug Administration on Monday.
It's a thrilling time at CordenPharma in Boulder. They're producing lipids for Moderna's vaccine. President Brian McCudden is leading the team. They've been hard at work since April.
"It's an honor, really, and it's very exciting to be able to work on this," McCudden told CBS4's Andrea Flores. "We're making the lipid for the Moderna vaccine, and the purpose for the lipid is it encapsulates, or surrounds, the messenger RNA, and that enables it to get into the cell safely and properly to start its work into making the antibodies for the coronavirus."
CordenPharma started shipping the lipids to Moderna's final formulation site in the U.S. and Europe last month.
"This is all part of Operation Warp Speed, and that's how we were working at it, at Operation Warp Speed, along with a lot of other Moderna partners. We're very proud of doing our part, supporting it, making it the right quality, and being able to deliver it," he said. "We've probably produced the equivalent of about 100 million doses worth, and in general, we're increasing our production rate to produce about 100 to 200 million doses worth a month."
CordenPharma is hopeful the Moderna vaccine will get FDA approval by the end of the year.
"We can't wait," McCudden said. "We're planning to keep making lipids through 2021, and we'll make it as long as we need to."
