Moderna surged to prominence thanks to its rapid development of a competitive COVID-19 vaccine. Since the early days of the pandemic, however, the company has struggled to maintain its momentum. Year-to-date, its stock is down close to 40%, trading around $110 per share. Adapting to COVID-19 variants The company hopes that its development of vaccines…
Pfizer seeks EUA for omicron booster for under-5 kids
Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and its COVID-19 vaccine partner BioNTech (Nasdaq: BNTX) today announced they’ve submitted a EUA application with the FDA for an omicron COVID-19 booster for children under 5. The companies are seeking authorization for their omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent COVID-19 vaccine as the third 3-µg dose in the three-dose primary series for children 6…
Pfizer mulls boosting COVID-19 vaccine price to $110 or more per dose
Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) signaled its intent to increase its COVID-19 vaccine price to roughly $110 to $130 per dose after the U.S. government’s purchase program for the vaccine expires, according to Angela Lukin, Pfizer’s global primary care and U.S. president. The COVID-19 vaccine price hike would pertain to patients 12 and older. The company could revise…
Bavarian Nordic launches Phase 3 clinical study of COVID-19 booster candidate
Bavarian Nordic (OMX:BAVA) has dosed the first subject in a Phase 3 clinical study of the COVID-19 vaccine candidate ABNCoV2. The study will test whether ABNCoV2 is non-inferior to Comirnaty from Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech (Nasdaq:BNTX) in terms of neutralizing antibodies it produces against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. Secondary endpoints in the study will…
Next-gen Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidates fare well in Phase 2/3 study
Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq:BNTX) have released positive data regarding two omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine candidates. One is monovalent, and the other is bivalent, combining the companies’ original BNT162b5 COVID-19 vaccine with mRNA based on the BA.1 omicron variant. A Phase 2/3 study found that a booster dose of the next-gen Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidates led…
Fall 2022 COVID-19 vaccine candidate tracker
Approximately two-thirds of Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. But COVID-19 cases remain elevated following the spread of a series of omicron sublineages, which pose a threat to those vaccinated and naturally infected with various lineages of the coronavirus. A variety of companies are developing next-generation COVID-19 vaccines that could potentially…
A next-gen vaccine that could help end COVID-19 whack-a-mole
COVID-19 is an emerging focus for EpicentRx, a private biotech focused on multiple immune-mediated disorders. The La Jolla, California–based company is developing a next-gen COVID vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 based on nucleocapsid rather than spike protein. The recombinant replication-competent adenoviral vaccine that expresses the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein could be more resistant to COVID-19 variants. The real-world…
Moderna inks deal with US for up to 300M omicron boosters
The U.S. government will pay $1.74 billion to buy 66 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine made with the new omicron-adapted formula, the drugmaker said today. The government has the option to acquire up to 300 million total doses of the omicron boosters under the agreement. The U.S. last month agreed to buy 105 million…
White House holds next-gen COVID-19 vaccine summit
The federal government continues to work closely with notable COVID-19 manufacturers, including Moderna and Pfizer, hosting a summit today focused on the future COVID-19 vaccines. “We need a vaccine that can stand up to multiple variants,” said White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha. While White House officials called for developing inexpensive novel vaccines that…
CureVac files lawsuit against BioNTech over patent infringement
The mRNA-focused biopharma CureVac N.V. (Nasdaq:CVAC) has filed a lawsuit in the German Regional Court in Düsseldorf against BioNTech SE (Nasdaq:BNTX) demanding compensation for infringement of CureVac’s patents. In particular, the lawsuit claims that the four German patents, EP 1 857 122 B1, DE 20 2015 009 961 U1, DE 20 2021 003 575 U1…
Pfizer and BioNTech forge new COVID-19 vaccine deal with U.S. government
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) and its partner BioNTech SE (Nasdaq:BNTX) profited handsomely from COVID-19 vaccine sales in 2021. The firms raked in more than $59 billion in combined sales of the Comirnaty vaccine. The two companies have now announced a new vaccine supply agreement with the U.S. government worth $3.2 billion. Under the terms of the…
FDA authorizes Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines in young children
Until recently, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was available for all individuals 5 years of age and older, while the Moderna vaccine was authorized for individuals at least 18. Now, the FDA has authorized the use of both vaccines in children from 6 months to four years old. In addition, the agency also agreed to allow…
FDA advisors unanimously back Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines in young children
An FDA panel voted 21 to 0 to authorize the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines in children between the ages of 6 months and 4 years of age. Children under the age of 5 constitute the only age group that has not been eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19. “I know there are a lot…
Valneva agrees to terminate UK supply agreement for COVID-19 vaccine
French vaccine company Valneva SE (Nasdaq:VALN; Euronext Paris:VLA) has reached a settlement agreement with regulators in the United Kingdom related to the termination of a supply agreement for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The company is attempting to salvage a COVID-19 vaccine deal with the EU after regulators announced plans to terminate an Advance Purchase Agreement (APA) related to the vaccine…
Sanofi-GSK COVID-19 booster could compete against updated Moderna and Pfizer offerings
Sanofi (Nasdaq:SNY) and GSK (NYSE:GSK) have announced that their next-generation COVID-19 booster vaccine candidate based on the beta variant yielded a substantial immune boost in adults previously primed with mRNA vaccines. The novel vaccine yielded a strong increase in antibody titers above baseline against various variants of concern, including a 40-fold increase against the BA.1 omicron subvariant 15…
FDA concludes Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine likely safe and effective in kids under 5
In the U.S., COVID-19 vaccines are widely available to all age groups apart from children under the age of five. However, that could change this month now that FDA has signaled that three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech (NYSE:PFE/Nasdaq BNTX) COVID-19 vaccine are likely effective against COVID-19 in an analysis ahead of a June 15 Vaccines…
Valneva aims to salvage COVID-19 vaccine deal with EU
French vaccine company Valneva SE (Nasdaq:VALN; Euronext Paris:VLA) is hoping to change the European Commission’s (EC) mind after regulators notified the firm that they intend to terminate an Advance Purchase Agreement (APA) for its inactivated whole-virus COVID-19 vaccine candidate VLA2001. VALN shares fell 15% to $20.00. In February, Valneva announced that it expected authorization for…
Moderna’s omicron bivalent COVID-19 vaccine outperformed original vaccine in analysis
Moderna (Nasdaq:MRNA) has announced that its omicron-containing bivalent COVID-19 booster candidate mRNA-1273.214 yielded 1.75 times more neutralizing antibodies than its FDA-approved mRNA-1273 vaccine. The company also noted that a booster dose of mRNA-1273.214 increased neutralizing geometric mean titers (GMT) against the omicron variant roughly eight times over baseline levels in the primary immunogenicity study. The…
FDA considers possible myocarditis link in Novavax COVID-19 vaccine recipients
In reviewing clinical trial data related to the Novavax (Nasdaq:NVAX) COVID-19 vaccine, FDA expressed concerns about the product’s potential to cause myocarditis, a type of heart inflammation. In a briefing document, FDA noted that the “identification of multiple potential vaccine-associated cases in a premarket safety database of ~40,000 vaccine recipients raises concern.” The agency goes…
Moderna’s first bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster candidate shows promise
Moderna’s (NYSE:MRNA) bivalent booster COVID-19 vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273.211, bested its first-generation mRNA-1273 vaccine in a Phase 2/3 study. The study compared the neutralizing antibody levels generated from both vaccine boosters. The mRNA-1273.211 vaccine booster candidate offered superior performance against all variants of concern, including omicron. The company notes that the mRNA-1273.211 booster outperformed the first-generation…
FDA allows booster dose Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in children 5 to 11
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine booster had been previously limited in the U.S. to individuals at least 12 years old, but now children as young as 5 are eligible, thanks to an expanded emergency use authorization related to the vaccine. The agency agreed to expand the vaccine’s use in children to “provide continued protection against COVID-19,” said…
SK Bioscience and GSK seek regulatory nod for COVID-19 vaccine in South Korea
SK Bioscience (KRX:302440) and GSK (NYSE:GSK) have filed a biologics license application with the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for their SKYCovione, a recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The self-assembled nanoparticle vaccine candidate is adjuvanted with GSK’s pandemic adjuvant. SKYCovione fared well in a Phase 3 study involving more than 4,000 adults in…
Moderna seeks authorization for COVID-19 vaccine in children as young as 6 months old
While a portion of the public is now eligible to receive a second booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine, the FDA has not yet authorized a vaccine for children aged 6 months to 5 years old. Moderna (Nasdaq:MRNA) is vying to be the first. The company announced today that it is filing a request for emergency…
CureVac and GSK announce positive preclinical data for next-gen bivalent mRNA vaccine candidate
Tübingen, Germany–based CureVac N.V. (Nasdaq:CVAC) and its partner GSK (NYSE:GSK) have announced positive preclinical data about their second-generation COVID-19 vaccine candidate that combines mRNAs for the beta and delta variants. The companies conducted the preclinical research in conjunction with the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Germany. The research pitted the bivalent candidate against monovalent COVID-19 vaccine candidates. The bivalent…
Takeda wins approval to distribute Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine in Japan
Takeda (NYSE:TAK) has announced that it has won manufacturing and marketing approval from the Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) for Nuvaxovid, a novel COVID-19 vaccine. Nuvaxovid (NVX-CoV2373) was initially developed by Novavax (Nasdaq:NVAX). The approval covers the use of the vaccine as both a primary and booster immunization in adults at least…