Johnson & Johnson Partnering With Bloomington Company To Help Make COVID-19 Vaccine

(BLOOMINGTON) – New Jersey-based Catalent Inc. has inked a deal with a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson for large scale manufacturing of J&J’s lead vaccine candidate for COVID-19. The collaboration commits to a joint investment for production at the Catalent Biologics facility in Bloomington.

Johnson & Johnson says its leading candidate for the COVID-19 virus is still in development and hopes to start conducting clinical trials in September.

Until then, the company needs to make more of it and has partnered with Catalant, Inc. to do that. Catalant plans to add 300 jobs at its Bloomington facility in order to help start making the vaccine.

“Catalent is proud to collaborate with Johnson & Johnson in its efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic and save lives,” John Chiminski, chief executive officer of Catalent, said in a news release. “Both organizations have committed to ambitious goals and are executing innovative strategies to meet the forecasted demand on an unprecedented timeline. We value the trust that Johnson & Johnson has placed in us regarding this important, time-sensitive program and will apply our extensive experience in quickly scaling up manufacturing operations for late-stage and commercial products.”

Catalent says the scale-up in production at its 875,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington will include the use of two new high-speed machines.

Catalent Inc. focuses on sterile drug product development and manufacturing, as well as primary and secondary packaging.