As confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 continue their downward slide, biopharma research efforts remain front and center, providing a new therapeutic for emergency use in the U.S. and high-efficacy phase III data for what could become the country’s fourth vaccine and its first protein subunit option.
While the amount of regulatory data in 2021 is up by 19% over last year, the 90 approvals by the U.S. FDA through late June is a decline of 17% over the same period in 2020, although the agency gave its blessing to the highest number of new molecular entities within the last several years.
While the number of biopharma’s nonprofit deals and grants, as well as their values, have dropped by more than 20% compared with last year, almost 71% of the combined funds are targeting COVID-19 therapeutics, vaccines and other pandemic efforts.