Featured Story | By Eric Sagonowsky Amid slower than expected rollouts for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine could serve as a key boost for the nationwide immunization push. But the pharma giant has fallen behind on its initial manufacturing goals, the New York Times reports, just as its first big data readout looms. read more |
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Top Stories By Ben Adams German biotech CureVac shouldn’t be discounted from being a major COVID-19 vaccine player despite being at the tail end of the race to market. read more By Tina Reed As pressure builds to speed vaccine distribution, Inova Health System CEO J. Stephen Jones calls for federal coordination to improve its efficiency. At some point, access to the vaccines themselves could become a limiting factor, but so far "that's not been the case," Jones said. read more By Robert King Rite Aid's CEO said she is bracing for a 'chaotic' few weeks in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout as a new president comes in and more people become eligible for doses. read more By Carly Helfand After AstraZeneca pledged not to profit off its COVID-19 shot during the pandemic, a report emerged that the drugmaker might be ready to call the pandemic over as soon as July. But according to EVP and biopharma president Ruud Dobber, it’s “too speculative” to predict when the vaccine may start earning money. read more By Arlene Weintraub Operation Warp Speed co-leader Moncef Slaoui is largely credited with fostering the speedy development of Pfizer's and Moderna's mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. But the U.S. fell way short of its goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans by the end of last year, and now Slaoui has submitted his resignation to incoming President Joe Biden. read more By Carly Helfand Earlier this week, Pfizer partner BioNTech upped the pair’s 2021 COVID-19 output projection to 2 billion doses for 2021, up from a previous estimate of up from a previous estimate of 1.3 billion But how will the companies get there? By doing things “very differently and very out of the box in manufacturing,” CEO Albert Bourla explained Tuesday. read more By Robert King A new report found that the number of deals in the hospital industry was 79 in 2020, down from the 92 that took place in 2019. read more By Nick Paul Taylor Celltrion’s anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody has improved outcomes in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 in a phase 2/3 clinical trial. The Korean biopharma reported lower rates of progression to severe COVID-19, shortened time to clinical recovery and reduced viral load in patients on the drug. read more By Angus Liu Scientists from the University of Bonn, the Karolinska Institutet and Scripps Research Institute have designed a COVID-19 treatment by fusing "nanobodies" from a llama and an alpaca. In lab experiments, the engineered antibodies were able to neutralize emerging mutants of the novel coronavirus. read more By Fraiser Kansteiner,Eric Sagonowsky,Angus Liu,Conor Hale J&J fell behind on its shot manufacturing goals, The New York Times reports. Sinovac's shot is just 50.38% effective, Brazil said. Researchers from a trio of institutions have synthesized nanobodies against COVID-19. Celltrion's antibody drug helped patients in a phase 2/3 trial. Plus, the world will still need CureVac's shot, a Bayer exec said. read more By Healthcare Staff Follow along with the latest COVID-19 news straight from the Fierce Healthcare team. read more By Amirah Al Idrus COVID-19 threw a wrench in Imara’s plans. The company was testing a treatment for sickle cell disease—which occurs more often in people of African descent—during a pandemic that disproportionately affected communities of color. But it learned some lessons along the way that aren’t just useful for its own work, but for anyone working on drugs for diverse populations (so really, anyone working on drugs, period). read more By Ben Adams Contract research organization PPD said that while the pandemic is surging again across the world, lessons since March put the industry in a better position to keep trials going, as it says approvals for new vaccines haven’t and won’t lead to a letup in its COVID-19 trial work. read more By Amirah Al Idrus The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred enormous interest and innovation in vaccines, antivirals and anti-infective drugs and for obvious reasons. There’s another area that might have been buoyed by the threat of a new illness that had no specific treatments—but wasn’t. That area, of course, is antibiotics development. read more |
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