SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Stemirna Therapeutics said on Wednesday it had suspended work at a factory it had planned to use to manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine candidate that uses messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, citing a lack of demand.
Stemirna, whose backers include private equity firm HongShan, previously known as Sequoia Capital China, said in a statement it had only been testing production and would now focus on research instead. It did not give more details on the trial operations.
The company had planned to have the capacity to produce 400 million doses of its vaccine candidate a year via two factories, the second of which had not started operations.
Stemirna said in May it had raised a “few hundred million” yuan in a capital raise to accelerate the development of its vaccine pipelines, which include ones for tumor treatments and infectious diseases. In 2021, it raised $200 million to finance production and clinical trials.
Stemirna was among a handful of domestic companies in China racing to develop mRNA vaccines, after the country throughout the pandemic declined to use mRNA vaccines from abroad.
But demand for COVID-19 vaccines in the country has plummeted after China lifted its COVID curbs abruptly in December, prompting a wave of infections.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Brenda Goh; editing by Barbara Lewis)
