Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.'s oral antiviral, maribavir, failed to meet the primary endpoint of noninferiority compared to Roche Holding AG’s valganciclovir in the phase III Aurora study for cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients. The multicenter, randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, active-controlled study was to form the basis for a future label expansion for the therapy.

Pfizer Inc. has acquired rights to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) drug candidate sisunatovir from Lianbio Co. Ltd. in a deal worth up to $155 million covering development and commercialization rights in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. With this agreement, Pfizer now holds global development and commercialization rights to the candidate, an orally administered fusion inhibitor is designed to block RSV replication by inhibiting F-mediated fusion with the host cell.

CSL Ltd. subsidiary CSL Seqirus signed a licensing and development deal with Arcturus Therapeutics Inc. to in-license Arcturus’ late-stage self-amplifying mRNA vaccine platform technology. Arcturus will receive $200 million up front and is eligible to receive more than $1.3 billion in development milestones and over $3 billion in commercial milestones.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022 was awarded to Svante Pääbo today "for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution." Pääbo, who is currently the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues overcame extreme technical challenges to sequence the DNA of ancient hominids – because after tens of thousands of years, there is no such thing as aging well for DNA.

An antibody that protects babies against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) from Astrazeneca Ltd. and Sanofi SA was among a string of recommendations from the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use, paving the way for approval within the next few months and a potential launch in 2023.

After raising AU$2.2 million in its series A round, University of Western Australia spinout Lixa Pty Ltd. has emerged from stealth mode and is gearing up for clinical trials of its anti-biofilm platform technology that could preserve antibiotics in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.’s dengue fever vaccine, Qdenga, was approved in Indonesia Aug. 23, making it the first global approval for the tetravalent vaccine. The approval marks Takeda’s first marketed vaccine outside of Japan. Indonesia’s National Agency for Drug and Food Control approved the vaccine for prevention of dengue disease caused by any serotype in individuals 6 years to 45 years of age.