Infectious Disease

AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) announced today that it voluntarily paused the trials for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate after an unexplained illness. The company said in a news release that a standard review process was triggered so an independent committee could review safety data surrounding a single event of an unexplained illness that occurred in the UK Phase III…

Executives from nine different drug companies today announced a pledge to ensure safety with a potential COVID-19 vaccine. The CEOs of AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN), BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX), GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Merck (NYSE:MRK), Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA), Novavax (NSDQ:NVAX), Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)  and Sanofi (NYSE:SNY), all of whom are developing vaccine candidates, all signed the pledge, which vows to “uphold the integrity of the scientific process” as…

Laboratory Corporation of America (NYSE:LH) announced today that it launched its COVID-19, influenza A/B and RSV diagnostic combo. The single-panel test is designed to detect multiple types of infections including the novel coronavirus, the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), helping doctors diagnose patients and inform decisions for treatment options. Burlington, N.C.-based LabCorp’s testing combo…

AstraZeneca has denied news reports that it’s involved in talks with U.S. authorities about an emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The denial comes after recent news reports claiming the Trump administration is eyeing a plan to fast-track the vaccine candidate, AZD1222, before the Nov. 3 presidential election. “AstraZeneca has not discussed emergency…

A top FDA official has threatened to resign if the Trump administration moves too quickly to approve a vaccine for COVID-19, according to a published report. Peter Marks, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), made the threat over concerns a vaccine would be approved without being proven safe and effective,…

Researchers at Hackensack Meridian Health are touting the drug tocilizumab as a treatment for critically ill COVID-19 patients in the ICU. Observational data of hospitalized COVID-19 patients shows that tocilizumab, generally used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and cancer, improves hospital survival in the critically ill ICU patients, according to a news release. The researchers published…

Medtech stocks helped the S&P 500 Index reach record highs today amid a bounceback from the lows of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reuters reported that medtech played its part in the record turn of the market, with Abiomed (NSDQ:ABMD), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (NSDQ:REGN) and West Pharmaceutical Services (NYSE:WST), all of which are involved in developing COVID-19 therapeutics, all rising more than 50% since the index’s…

The Corona Accelerated R&D in Europe (CARE) consortium today announced its launch to accelerate the development of COVID-19 treatments. Supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative, the new consortium has collected $92.7 million (€77.7 million) in grant funding in an effort to conduct a 5-year project, bringing together 37 partners from Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany,…

Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino Biologics‘ COVID-19 vaccine candidate has received a patent from the Chinese government — the first such patent granted in the country. Chinese state media outlet People’s Daily reported Sunday that the country’s National Intellectual Property Administration granted the patent for Ad5-nCoV, which uses a weakened human common cold virus to deliver genetic material that…

Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BDX) and Quidel are struggling to fulfill orders for rapid COVID-19 antigen tests as the virus continues to spread, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported today that the two companies, which are the only ones that have FDA emergency use authorizations to sell the rapid diagnostics, cannot keep up with…

Russian officials announced today that they will make a COVID-19 vaccine available to its citizens on a voluntary basis, with President Vladimir Putin saying the vaccine has gone through all necessary tests. The vaccine, developed at by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow, will first become available to medical workers, teachers and at-risk groups. Kirill Dmitriev,…

Yale School of Medicine and AI Therapeutics announced the launch of a multi-institutional clinical trial for a drug for treating COVID-19. LAM-002A (apilimod) has a proven safety record and preliminary research has shown that it can block the cellular entry and trafficking of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing COVID-19, according to a news release.…

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) announced that its lead SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate protected against infection of the virus causing COVID-19 in pre-clinical studies. New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&J published data in Nature that showed the company’s investigational adenovirus serotype 26 (Ad26), vector-based vaccine elicited a robust immune response with “neutralizing antibodies” to prevent subsequent infection and provide complete or…

Sanofi (NYSE:SNY) and GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) announced that they reached an agreement with the UK government to supply up to 60 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Subject to a final contract, the UK government will receive the doses of a vaccine candidate developed by the two companies in partnership and based on the recombinant protein-based technology Sanofi used to…

PerkinElmer recently launched an online, open-access COVID-19 data dashboard for the global scientific community. The dashboards are powered by the company’s data analytics and data visualization solutions to help researchers quickly and easily leverage large amounts of drug compounds and clinical trial data. The COVID-19 dashboards are supported by PerkinsElmer’s Signals Lead Discovery and the…

Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) announced today that it began dosing participants in the Phase 3 clinical study of its mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna’s COVE (coronavirus efficacy) study is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Biomedical Advanced Research…

Two U.S. government agencies today announced an agreement with Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) for production and delivery of 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, along with the U.S. Defense Dept., agreed to the large-scale production and U.S. delivery deal once Pfizer’s vaccine is successfully manufactured and approved. In addition…

Researchers at Oxford University say early-stage results from a Phase I/II clinical trial of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate display safety and strong immune responses. Results, published in The Lancet, revealed that the vaccine is safe, causes few side effects and induces strong immune responses in both parts of the immune system in the fight against COVID-19,…

PerkinElmer (NYSE:PKI) said today that it anticipates sales growth of approximately 12% for the second quarter, fueled by demand for COVID-19 tests and related products. The Waltham, Mass.-based diagnostic and scientific instrument company said demand for its RT-PCR and serology tests, RNA extraction systems and kits and automated liquid handling instrumentation was particularly robust. COVID-19 related…

More than 20 biopharmaceutical companies around the world have pledged more than $1 billion toward the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund that launched today. Pledges include $100 million from Pfizer and $50 million from Boehringer Ingelheim. An initiative of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), the fund’s goal is to bring two to four…

Here are a few real estate and facility management strategies to help you get your pharma R&D lab up and running amid the COVID-19 pandemic, courtesy of commercial real estate outfit JLL. Roger Humphrey, JLL COVID-19 has unleashed a logistical conundrum for pharmaceutical leaders: How do you keep momentum in therapeutics development, when, like all…

Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BDX) announced today that it’s received an FDA emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 antigen test, which the company will start shipping this week. BD plans to ramp-up manufacturing capacity to 2 million tests per week by the end of September, with 10 million tests produced by the end of September. The tests run…

FDA expects that any COVID-19 vaccine it licenses should prevent the disease or decrease its severity in at least 50% of people vaccinated, according to guidance that the agency released today. The recommendation, which FDA said reflects the advice the agency has provided vaccine developers in recent months, was part of an overall document called…

A new collaboration funded by in part by $1.1 million from the FDA is working on finding new uses for existing drugs for areas of high unmet medical need — with a pilot project focused on treatments for COVID-19. The Critical Path Institute (C-Path) this week announced the launch of the CURE Drug Repurposing Collaboratory…

Lindsay Brownell, Wyss Institute The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded $16 million to Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering to identify and test FDA-approved drugs that could be repurposed to prevent or treat COVID-19. Using its computational drug discovery pipelines and human Organ Chip technologies, the institute has already found multiple…