Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Adaptive Biotechnologies, Immune Therapeutics, Junshi, Lexicon, Olix, Polarisqb, Revive, Ridgeback, Sciclone, Sorrento, Sosei, Tarveda.
President Donald Trump has issued an executive order enabling the Defense Production Act, which gives the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services broader leeway to conscript industrial production to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.
LONDON – As the epicenter of the COVID-19 epidemic shifted to Europe and the number of deaths in Italy exceeded the toll in China, the EU stepped up efforts to mount a coordinated response, with a big boost for collaborative R&D funding and a call for clinical research to be pooled in multicenter, multi-arm randomized controlled trials.
DUBLIN – The Genentech arm of Basel, Switzerland-based Roche Holding AG plans to move its interleukin-6 (IL-6) inhibitor, Actemra (tocilizumab), into a global phase III trial in patients with severe pneumonia associated with COVID-19 infection.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Acer, Astrazeneca, Applied DNA, Cansino, Cytodyn, Dicerna, Gilead, Hansoh, Janssen, Merck, Novartis, Oramed, Takis and Virpax
.
Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Aqualung, Arecor, Cyclica, Entos, Forma, Generex, Hoth, Lilly, Mateon, Nascent, Neurotheryx, Rocket, Roivant, Stabilitech.
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Algernon, Bellus, Biondvax, Bioxcel, Cellphire, Genentech, GT Biopharma, ISA, Nantkwest, Novartis, Oramed, Pfizer, Phathom, Soligenix, TFF.
The first attempt at using existing drugs to treat patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 has yielded disappointing results. In 200 hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19, a 14-day regimen of twice-daily treatment with Kaletra/Aluvia (lopinavir/ritonavir, Abbvie Inc.) did not hasten recovery when added to the standard of care.
The U.S. capacity for SARS-CoV-2 testing is limited by several items, including the swabs used to collect patient specimens, but the supply of reagents has been front and center recently. Despite those concerns, several private test makers said they are quickly ramping up production, including Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Waltham, Mass., which said it has enough supplies of all types on hand to provide 2 million reactions per week, a volume that should increase to 5 million per week in April.
RSS
