Fol­low­ing in the steps of Mod­er­na and Pfiz­er, the oth­er two Amer­i­can drug­mak­ers cur­rent­ly in Phase III tri­als for their Covid-19 vac­cines, As­traZeneca post­ed its own study pro­to­cols over the week­end. The move is the lat­est in a se­ries of rare peeks be­hind the cur­tain, as such blue­prints are typ­i­cal­ly shared once such tri­als are com­plet­ed.

“Giv­en the un­prece­dent­ed glob­al im­pact of the Coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and the need for pub­lic in­for­ma­tion, As­traZeneca has pub­lished the de­tailed pro­to­col and de­sign of our AZD1222 clin­i­cal tri­al. As with most clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, pro­to­cols are not typ­i­cal­ly shared pub­licly due to the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and in­tegri­ty of tri­als. As­traZeneca con­tin­ues to work with in­dus­try peers to en­sure a con­sis­tent ap­proach to shar­ing time­ly clin­i­cal tri­al in­for­ma­tion,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment.

As­traZeneca’s tri­al, un­like the ones from coun­ter­parts, on­ly plans for one in­ter­im analy­sis that could al­low the com­pa­ny to stop the tri­al ear­ly and pe­ti­tion for an emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion. That analy­sis is ex­pect­ed to oc­cur at 75 in­fec­tions. Mod­er­na ex­pects two analy­ses, at 53 and 106 events, while Pfiz­er pen­ciled in four — at 32, 62, 92 and 120 cas­es.

The British phar­ma al­so in­di­cat­ed that it is aim­ing for a 50% ef­fi­ca­cy rate for its can­di­date, the thresh­old that the FDA has set for in its coro­n­avirus vac­cine guide­lines, where­as Mod­er­na and Pfiz­er are both aim­ing for 60% ef­fec­tive­ness.

All three com­pa­nies al­so have dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria for symp­toms in the pri­ma­ry end­points of their tri­als, with each in­clud­ing those as­so­ci­at­ed with mild in­fec­tions. Er­ic Topol, one of the in­dus­try’s strongest ad­vo­cates for vac­cine trans­paren­cy, sum­ma­rized those dif­fer­ences in a tweet.

The all-im­por­tant pri­ma­ry end­point is dif­fer­ent for the 3 tri­als. This show how in­fec­tions are de­fined in the 3 pro­to­cols (with a pos­i­tive PCR test for virus). pic.twit­ter.com/JOPbH0SrI8

— Er­ic Topol (@Er­ic­Topol) Sep­tem­ber 19, 2020

Vac­cine mak­ers have been un­der in­tense po­lit­i­cal pres­sure through­out the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, but that has on­ly ramped up as No­vem­ber’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion draws near­er. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has re­peat­ed­ly of­fered promis­es that a vac­cine could be ready be­fore the elec­tion, and HHS sec­re­tary Alex Azar ef­fec­tive­ly set the FDA staff on no­tice say­ing that his sig­na­ture is re­quired on all rule mak­ing.

Thus far, Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla has been the on­ly ex­ec­u­tive to say his com­pa­ny could know whether or not its vac­cine works in Oc­to­ber. Mod­er­na pres­i­dent Stephen Hoge, ap­pear­ing on CBS Evening News last week, said the drug­mak­er could know if its own vac­cine works by No­vem­ber.

De­spite a green light to re­sume in the UK, As­traZeneca’s Phase III tri­al re­mains on hold in the US af­ter a vol­un­teer in the UK de­vel­oped a con­di­tion thought to be trans­verse myelitis, a rare spinal in­flam­ma­tion dis­or­der, af­ter tak­ing their sec­ond dose of the vac­cine. The com­pa­ny has not con­firmed the di­ag­no­sis, and a doc­u­ment post­ed by Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty last week sug­gest­ed that the vac­cine was not linked to the con­di­tion.

That in­stance was the sec­ond time As­traZeneca’s tri­al was placed on hold fol­low­ing a case of un­di­ag­nosed mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis oc­cur­ring in a sep­a­rate tri­al par­tic­i­pant.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

While the US biosimilars industry has generally been a disappointment since its inception, with FDA approving 33 biosimilars since 2015, just a fraction of those have immediately followed their approvals with launches. And more than a handful of biosimilars for two of the biggest blockbusters of all time — AbbVie’s Humira and Amgen’s Enbrel — remain approved by FDA but still have not launched because of legal settlements.

Kura Oncology is clear to resume studies for its early-stage leukemia program after the FDA lifted a clinical hold Thursday afternoon.

Regulators had placed the hold on a Phase Ib study of KO-539, an experimental oral treatment for some genetic subsets of acute myeloid leukemia last November after a patient died while taking the drug. Kura expects to begin enrolling patients again imminently, CEO Troy Wilson told Endpoints News.