Novavax CEO Stanley Erck at the White House in 2020 (Andrew Harnik, AP Images)

As fears mount over J&J and As­traZeneca, No­vavax en­ters a shaky spot­light

As con­cerns rise around the J&J and As­traZeneca vac­cines, glob­al at­ten­tion is in­creas­ing­ly turn­ing to the lit­tle, 33-year-old, pro­duct­less, bank­rupt­cy-flirt­ing biotech that could: No­vavax.

In the now 16-month race to de­vel­op and de­ploy Covid-19 vac­cines, No­vavax has at times seemed like the pan­dem­ic’s most un­sus­pect­ing fron­trun­ner and at times like an over­hyped al­so-ran. Al­though they start­ed the pan­dem­ic with on­ly enough cash to last 6 months, they lever­aged old con­nec­tions and be­liev­ers in­to $2 bil­lion and emerged last sum­mer with da­ta ex­perts said sur­passed Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na. They un­veiled plans to quick­ly scale to 2 bil­lion dos­es. Then they couldn’t even make enough ma­te­r­i­al to run their US tri­al and watched four oth­er com­pa­nies beat them to the fin­ish line.

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