Open Orphan plc has signed a ‘major’ contract with an unnamed top global pharmaceutical company.
The contract builds on earlier successful contracts between the companies and is designed to obtain early market access of newly developed vaccines and support their entry into the EU and US markets until the end of 2020.
This contract is with Venn Life Sciences, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Open Orphan, which in turn benefits the other wholly owned subsidiary, hVIVO, as cross-selling opportunities arise in the course of vaccine development.
This contract should therefore be valued at more than just a monetary value of future Covid-19 vaccine development, and moreover it demonstrates the strategic value of becoming a global pharma services provider with particular expertise in providing services to the rapidly growing vaccine development market with a full suite of drug development expertise, clinical trial design and execution services.
Shares in Open Orphan have opened 5% higher to 12.3p in early morning trading.
Cathal Friel, Executive Chairman of Open Orphan, commented: "We are delighted to have signed this contract with a leading vaccine developer and one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world. This contract reinforces Open Orphan's position as one of the leading service providers to the vaccine industry globally.
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the vaccine industry is now an increasingly important and rapidly growing sector with many large pharmaceutical companies now directing huge amounts of resources towards their vaccine divisions to progress both Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 vaccines. Open Orphan is ideally positioned to capitalise upon this trend as we build the Company into a growing, profitable pharmaceutical services business."