* Expects to make 1 bln doses of vaccine adjuvant in 2021
* Says more than one COVID vaccine needed globally
* In talks for production funding and expansion
(Adds detail on COVID vaccines, GSK executive comment)
May 28 (Reuters) - Britain's GlaxoSmithKline laid
out plans on Thursday to produce 1 billion doses of vaccine
efficacy boosters, or adjuvants, next year as the race to
develop and produce a successful solution to the coronavirus
crisis heats up.
The world's largest vaccine maker said it was in talks with
governments to back a manufacturing expansion that would help to
scale up production of future vaccines for COVID-19, the disease
caused by the novel coronavirus.
It gave no indication of the programme's costs, saying only
that production would take place at sites in Europe and North
America and that it would reinvest any profit into coronavirus
research and preparation for future pandemics.
GSK is working on its own COVID vaccine with French
drugmaker Sanofi, one of the many projects to counter
the respiratory illness that currently that has no treatment and
has killed about 350,000 people.
Adjuvants, an area where GSK leads many of its peers, have
been shown to create a stronger and longer-lasting immunity
against infections and allow for lower dosing of the protein in
a vaccine, making way for higher-volume production.
"We believe that more than one vaccine will be needed to
address this global pandemic and we are working with partners
around the world to do so," said GSK Global Vaccines President
Roger Connor.
Experts have predicted that a successful vaccine will take
more than a year to develop and companies and governments are
pouring money into dozens of programmes as their best hope of
allowing a durable escape from lockdowns and get economies
expanding again.
The United States last week secured almost a third of the
first 1 billion doses planned for AstraZeneca's
experimental COVID-19 vaccine by pledging up to $1.2 billion.
On Thursday GSK said that making its adjuvant available to
the world's poorest countries will be a key part of its efforts.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Aakash Jagadeesh Babu in
Bengaluru and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt
Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and David Goodman)