WELCOME TO FIERCE LIFE SCIENCES WEEKLY DIGEST After an ingredient mix-up trashed up to 15 million J&J doses last month, Emergent’s Baltimore plant has paused production following an FDA inspection. It’s another blow to the vaccine, with broader distribution on hold pending reviews of rare blood clots. Meanwhile, Moderna delayed deliveries to Canada and the U.K., thanks to hiccups in its European supply chain, and Roche has cut two midstage COVID-19 assets from its pipeline. But companies still aim to capitalize on a year of science in the international spotlight, and the biggest ad spenders in biopharma hope to reach people at home as the world realigns to the pandemic. | |
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Featured Story | By Kevin Dunleavy Johnson & Johnson’s takeover of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing at an error-prone Emergent BioSolutions plant didn’t last long. At the FDA's request, Emergent stopped production just two weeks after J&J took over manufacturing its shot there. read more |
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Top Stories Of The Week By Angus Liu Scientists at AstraZeneca have early data showing that an experimental antibody drug increases "good" HDL cholesterol in monkeys and people. Combining the drug with a PCSK9 inhibitor appeared to have a synergistic effect. read more By Beth Snyder Bulik Even as other industries slashed ad budgets, pharma advertisers continued to spend on TV and digital especially—reaching a total of $6.6 billion in 2020. read more By Noah Higgins-Dunn As concerns over cases of rare but severe blood clots among vaccinated people mounted last week, Johnson & Johnson reportedly reached out to rival COVID-19 vaccine makers for help, and only one agreed, The Wall Street Journal reports. read more By Noah Higgins-Dunn Moderna warned that it will deliver fewer doses than previously anticipated to “a number of countries,” including the U.K. and Canada. read more By Andrea Park A new study led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that mass COVID-19 screening could be solved by a quick sniff from a dog—a dognostic test, if you will. read more By Annalee Armstrong Vertex has boosted an agreement with CRISPR Therapeutics to $900 million upfront as the companies race to beat bluebird bio to the market with a new gene editing therapy for sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia called CTX001. read more By Arlene Weintraub As the June decision date draws near for Biogen’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab, analysts at RBC Capital Markets are raising concerns about the drug's prospects for approval. They considered eight recent developments—some specific to the drug and others more generally related to the Alzheimer’s market environment. read more By Ben Adams Charles Ferté, senior director and global project leader of oncology R&D at AstraZeneca, is leaving the company. read more By Ben Adams Roche has cut a series of experimental lung drugs from its pipeline, including two midstage COVID-19 assets. read more By Nick Paul Taylor The FDA has approved a self-injectable form of Genentech and Novartis’ Xolair. Introducing the new prefilled syringe product will free patients from the need to visit healthcare providers to get treated. read more By Conor Hale After spending months churning out tens of millions of its card-sized coronavirus antigen tests, Abbott has begun shipping the BinaxNOW tests nationwide to CVS, Walgreens and Walmart stores. read more By Angus Liu The rollout of bluebird bio’s blood disease gene therapy Zynteglo is off to a rough start—to say the least. After resolving a manufacturing-related setback and overcoming another delay caused by COVID-19, the biotech has failed to reach a reimbursement agreement in Germany, its first launch country. read more Resources Sponsored by: Cytiva A one-stop hub for Cytiva resources to support process intesification Sponsored By: August Bioservices How has COVID-19 impacted CRO/CDMO customer (dis)satisfaction and outsourcing decisions for pharma and biotech companies in 2021 and beyond? Sponsored by: Cytiva A one-stop hub for Cytiva resources to support process development and manufacturing of your novel molecule Sponsored by: PerkinElmer Informatics Discover the benefits of a cloud-native ELN that delivers better performance, security, connectivity, total cost of ownership PLUS sub-second search results through even the largest data volumes. 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