Novavax Inc. just got a significant investment to advance its Covid-19 vaccine candidate.

The Oslo, Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a foundation that invests in vaccine development for emerging infectious diseases, plans to invest up to $384 million to push the candidate through phase 2 clinical trials, the Gaithersburg biotech said Monday. The capital, on top of an initial $4 million from CEPI in March, would help the company increase production for this program — to potentially make up to 100 million vaccine doses by the end of the year for further testing. It would also enable it to increase manufacturing capacity, to produce more than 1 billion doses in 2021, according to Novavax.

A phase 1 trial is slated to start this month in Australia, with results expected in July. Then Novavax said it would initiate the phase 2 portion of the study “in multiple countries.”

If the vaccine ultimately passes all of its clinical testing and wins regulatory approval,…