Japan's Takara Bio to produce mRNA vaccines possibly from January

Japanese biotech firm Takara Bio Inc. will start producing messenger RNA vaccines on a contract basis possibly from next January, its officials said Thursday, in a move likely to help cut the country's reliance on imports for COVID-19 vaccines.Takara Bio is expected to launch in January a production base capable of manufacturing annually the equivalent of 12 million doses of Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine at its factory in Kusatsu in western Japan's Shiga Prefecture.The lack of domestic mRNA vaccine supplies caused delays in Japan's COVID-19 vaccine rollout as it waited for the arrival of d…READ FULL ARTICLE