(Reuters) - The Scottish unit of French vaccine maker Valneva has received a grant of up to 20 million pounds ($27 million) to partly fund the research and development (R&D) of manufacturing its COVID-19 vaccine VLA2001, the company said on Monday.
Valneva will receive the funds from Scotland's national economic development agency Scottish Enterprise, which it has been in talks with since December. The funding will come in two tranches.
The first grant of up to 12.5 million pounds will support the company's efforts on the VLA2001, its inactivated, whole virus COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The second round of up to 7.5 million pounds will be used for Valneva's other vaccines.
Apart from the highly awaited COVID-19 vaccine, Valneva is developing VLA1553, a mosquito-born viral infection chikungunya vaccine, which it intends to produce in the Scottish town of Livingston, near Edinburgh. It has recently reported positive phase 3 data for both VLA2001 and VLA1553.
"Valneva is a valued contributor to our life sciences sector and the Livingston facility ... This funding package will support high quality jobs create, drive further research and underpin the company's operations in Scotland," Scottish Government Business Minister Ivan McKee said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Valneva said it expected the COVID-19 vaccine candidate to considerably boost its yearly sales in 2022, seeing them at 350 million euros to 500 million euros ($398 million to $568 million).
The sales of its other vaccines are expected at 60 million to 70 million euros.
($1 = 0.7343 pounds)
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(The story corrects to add dropped word "vaccine" in headline)