Coro­n­avirus up­date: A sum­mit in Gene­va, WuXi hunts an­ti­bod­ies and J&J part­ners on a vac­cine search

World health lead­ers, Big Phar­ma rep­re­sen­ta­tives and ex­ec­u­tives from the top biotechs search­ing for drugs and vac­cines are meet­ing now in Gene­va for a World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion sum­mit to dis­cuss and con­sol­i­date a re­sponse to the out­break of a nov­el coro­n­avirus that has al­ready in­fect­ed near­ly 50,000 peo­ple and killed over 1,000. Mean­while, across the globe, news con­tin­ues to break.

→ J&J an­nounced a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Bio­med­ical Ad­vanced Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty, part of the De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices, to ex­pe­dite the de­vel­op­ment of a vac­cine. The Phar­ma gi­ant is screen­ing its li­brary of an­tivi­ral mol­e­cules for one that is ef­fec­tive against the new coro­n­avirus. It’s an old­er and po­ten­tial­ly slow­er ap­proach than those now be­ing tak­en by biotechs such as Mod­er­na, Cure­Vac and In­ovio, who can write a DNA or RNA-based vac­cine with­in days or hours of get­ting the virus se­quenced and then lab test it. In ei­ther case, though, much of the de­vel­op­ment time lead­ing up to Phase I is de­vot­ed to pre­clin­i­cal test­ing. By the most op­ti­mistic es­ti­mates, that will take at least 3 months.

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