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Johnson & Johnson on Thursday announced a collaboration between the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and Emergent BioSolutions Inc. to support the manufacturing of its lead investigational COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

“We have set a high bar. Johnson & Johnson has committed to rapidly produce and supply more than one billion doses of a safe and effective vaccine globally,” Dr. Paul Stoffels, vice chairman of the executive committee and chief scientific officer for Johnson & Johnson, said. “Our collaboration with Emergent is proof that we are moving quickly to deliver on that promise.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Johnson & Johnson is investing to expand drug substance capacity related to the vaccine candidate.

Beginning in 2020, Emergent will provide drug substance manufacturing services with its molecule-to-market contract development and manufacturing organization offering and will reserve operations capacity to potentially support commercial manufacturing of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate leveraging Janssen’s proven AdVac and PER.C6 technologies beginning in 2021.

The company said it has already begun preparations for clinical vaccine production at its facility in Leiden, the Netherlands, with the aim of initiating Phase 1 human clinical studies of its vaccine candidate in September 2020.

Johnson & Johnson will begin production at risk and is committed to bringing an affordable vaccine to the public on a not-for-profit basis for emergency pandemic use.

This is the first in a series of prospective global collaboration agreements designed to accelerate manufacturing of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, and further the company’s goal to supply more than one billion doses of the vaccine globally.

Simultaneously, Johnson & Johnson said it is also aiming to rapidly scale up vaccine manufacturing capabilities globally, including increasing capacity in countries outside the U.S. The additional global capacity will assist in the rapid production of a vaccine and enable the supply of more than one billion doses of a safe and effective vaccine to people around the world.