First mRNA vaccine to be produced in UK approved by regulators
The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved Moderna’s Covid-19 Spikevax, the first domestically produced mRNA vaccine, for this year’s NHS vaccination campaign.
This breakthrough medicine will be supplied from the Moderna Innovation and Technology Center in Harwell, Oxfordshire, a facility ready to produce millions of modern mRNA vaccines.
Moderna has committed over £1bn to research and development in the UK over a decade as part of a 10-year partnership with the government.
Darius Hughes, Moderna’s UK managing director, said: “We are incredibly proud that with this approval from the MHRA, our LP.8.1 vaccine becomes the first commercially available mRNA vaccine produced in the UK.
“By building a sustainable UK-based supply, we are strengthening resilience to Covid-19, ensuring the UK is future-ready and showing what British science can achieve when government, industry and researchers work together.”
The partnership with the government aims to strengthen the UK’s pandemic preparedness by ensuring vaccines are made in the UK.
The government has previously said Moderna’s facility could produce up to 100 million doses a year, a number that would rise to 250 million in a pandemic and create about 150 high-skilled jobs.
When the facility was announced in September 2025, CEO Stephane Bance told Sky News that the company would open the factory in a country that “still believes in vaccines”.
This comment was made amid increasing anti-vaccine and science-skeptical attitudes within the Trump administration.
He told the broadcaster that the UK operation “could pay dividends” if anti-vaccine rhetoric affects demand in the US.
“If the willingness of governments around the world, including the United States, to use vaccines decreases, we may be able to invest less in vaccines,” Bancel added. “We must invest where there is demand for our products.”
