Re­searchers to­day spot­light­ed da­ta from a clin­i­cal study of­fer­ing the first hard ev­i­dence that a treat­ment can save the lives of pa­tients suf­fer­ing from Covid-19.

The old gener­ic dex­am­etha­sone was tied to a one-third re­duc­tion of deaths among ven­ti­lat­ed pa­tients with a one-fifth re­duc­tion in mor­tal­i­ty among a group get­ting oxy­gen. There was no ben­e­fit for pa­tients who did not re­quire res­pi­ra­to­ry as­sis­tance.

“Dex­am­etha­sone is the first drug to be shown to im­prove sur­vival in COVID-19,” not­ed Pe­ter Hor­by, an Ox­ford pro­fes­sor and a chief in­ves­ti­ga­tor in the tri­al. “This is an ex­treme­ly wel­come re­sult. The sur­vival ben­e­fit is clear and large in those pa­tients who are sick enough to re­quire oxy­gen treat­ment, so dex­am­etha­sone should now be­come stan­dard of care in these pa­tients. Dex­am­etha­sone is in­ex­pen­sive, on the shelf, and can be used im­me­di­ate­ly to save lives world­wide.”

“(I)t is fan­tas­tic that the first treat­ment demon­strat­ed to re­duce mor­tal­i­ty is one that is in­stant­ly avail­able and af­ford­able world­wide,” en­thused Ox­ford’s Mar­tin Lan­dray. — John Car­roll

BAR­DA puts $85M be­hind Re­gen­eron’s an­ti­body ef­fort

BAR­DA, the US biode­fense agency, is back­ing Re­gen­eron’s Covid-19 an­tivi­ral an­ti­body ef­fort with $85 mil­lion.

Al­though BAR­DA has al­ready promised over $2 bil­lion to ac­cel­er­ate and scale the de­vel­op­ment of Covid-19 vac­cines, but this is the largest tranche of fund­ing yet for a treat­ment ef­fort. BAR­DA worked with Re­gen­eron on their Ebo­la an­ti­body ef­fort – help­ing lead to one of the first two suc­cess­ful treat­ments for the virus in a tri­al last Au­gust – and the pair first an­nounced col­lab­o­ra­tion on a sim­i­lar ef­fort for Covid-19 in Feb­ru­ary.

The news of the fund­ing comes days af­ter Re­gen­eron put their first cock­tail of an­ti­bod­ies in the clin­ic. The Tar­ry­town-based biotech plans to even­tu­al­ly run 4 tri­als, 2 of them test­ing the drug as a treat­ment and 2 as a pro­phy­lac­tic.

HHS has al­so fund­ed an­ti­body ef­forts from As­traZeneca and SAb Bio­ther­a­peu­tics. Roche and J&J, among oth­ers, have re­ceived fund­ing for oth­er types of treat­ment. — Ja­son Mast

Pe­ter Kolchin­sky of­fers Covid-19 play­er No­vavax a thumbs up and $200M 

RA Cap­i­tal’s Pe­ter Kolchin­sky is back­ing No­vavax’s Covid-19 play, to the tune of $200 mil­lion.

A fund af­fil­i­at­ed with RA is buy­ing 4.4 mil­lion shares of stock $NVAX in the com­pa­ny at the June 12 clos­ing price.

Covid-19 has been a big help for No­vavax, which has had its share of clin­i­cal fail­ures to deal with. CEPI stepped up with its largest com­mit­ment to date, back­ing the biotech’s Phase I and Phase II tri­als for NVX-CoV2373 for up to $384 mil­lion while “dra­mat­i­cal­ly” in­creas­ing its pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty for the vac­cine anti­gen as well as the ad­ju­vant need­ed to boost its ef­fi­ca­cy. That mon­ey was added on top of the $4 mil­lion CEPI sent No­vavax to get things go­ing in R&D with­out any de­lays for ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“The glob­al vac­cine ef­fort is search­ing for can­di­dates that are ca­pa­ble of both gen­er­at­ing the high­est neu­tral­iz­ing an­ti­body titers and large-scale pro­duc­tion. We are ex­cit­ed to in­crease our in­vest­ment in No­vavax, which along with re­sources from CEPI and the U.S. De­part­ment of De­fense, will sup­port No­vavax in its im­por­tant work de­vel­op­ing an ef­fec­tive, scal­able vac­cine for SARS-CoV-2,” said Kolchin­sky in a state­ment. — John Car­roll

Sanofi sets aside $679M cash for new vac­cine sites in France

As Sanofi push­es its par­al­lel R&D ef­forts on a pair of Covid-19 vac­cine can­di­dates, the French drug­mak­er said it would pour $679.4 mil­lion (€610 mil­lion) in­to two vac­cine sites on its home turf.

The com­mit­ment to “make France its world class cen­ter of ex­cel­lence” comes just weeks af­ter CEO Paul Hud­son, a Brit, drew the ire of French min­is­ters by say­ing in an in­ter­view that the US gov­ern­ment “has the right to the largest pre-or­der be­cause it’s in­vest­ed in tak­ing the risk” — a com­ment Sanofi swift­ly walked back.

“Sanofi’s heart beats in France,” Hud­son said in a pre­pared state­ment. “Sanofi is a ma­jor health­care play­er in France, in Eu­rope, and world­wide. It is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to fo­cus our re­sources and ex­per­tise against the cur­rent pan­dem­ic, but al­so to in­vest in prepar­ing for fu­ture ones.”.

French au­thor­i­ties have been work­ing with Sanofi the last sev­er­al months to achieve this, he added, in a com­ment that echoed Ger­many’s de­ci­sion to buy a stake of mR­NA biotech Cure­Vac with €300 mil­lion in fed­er­al mon­ey. And Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron came through with a pledge of €200 mil­lion to fu­el do­mes­tic re­search and man­u­fac­tur­ing, a boost Hud­son has been ad­vo­cat­ing for.

“Every­body saw that dur­ing this cri­sis some com­mon­ly used drugs were no longer pro­duced in France and Eu­rope. So we must no longer just ask ques­tions, but draw the con­clu­sions,” Macron said at Sanofi’s Mar­cy-L’Étoile fa­cil­i­ty.

At the same time — and it might have been drowned out by the Syn­thorx buy­out and dra­mat­ic cuts in the car­dio and di­a­betes units — the com­pa­ny re­mind­ed read­ers of the press re­lease that vac­cines were iden­ti­fied as a key area for growth in the cor­po­rate strat­e­gy Hud­son laid out last year.

Sanofi plans to build a vac­cine pro­duc­tion site at Neuville-sur-Saône and a re­search cen­ter at Mar­cy-l’Étoile, cre­at­ing a whole chain from R&D to man­u­fac­tur­ing with­in the coun­try.

The for­mer fa­cil­i­ty will cost an es­ti­mat­ed €490 mil­lion over five years and is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate 200 new jobs. The lat­ter will fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing fu­ture vac­cines, with high­ly-spe­cial­ized labs fo­cused on emerg­ing dis­eases and pan­dem­ic risks. — Am­ber Tong

Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege of Lon­don preps Phase I tri­al of mR­NA vac­cine

A new mR­NA vac­cine ef­fort is en­ter­ing the clin­ic.

Three months af­ter Mod­er­na be­gan hu­man Covid-19 vac­cine test­ing with an mR­NA can­di­date, a can­di­date based on sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy from the Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege of Lon­don will go in­to an ear­ly-stage tri­al this week, Reuters re­port­ed.

Un­like vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er clin­i­cal-stage Covid-19 vac­cine, the Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege does not have a ma­jor in­dus­try part­ner. In­stead they’ve re­ceived over $56.5 mil­lion in fund­ing from par­lia­ment and donors, and have set up a new ven­ture for com­mer­cial­iz­ing the vac­cine should it prove safe and ef­fec­tive.

Al­though sim­i­lar in prin­ci­ple to Mod­er­na’s can­di­date — putting the ge­net­ic code for a coro­n­avirus pro­tein in­to hu­man cells, which ex­press the pro­tein and trig­ger an im­mune re­sponse — the col­lege’s tech­nol­o­gy dif­fers in key ways. Called small-am­pli­fy­ing RNA, the ge­net­ic code in the vac­cine will repli­cate it­self in­side cells, al­low­ing for much small­er dos­es and thus a po­ten­tial­ly much broad­er scale. It was de­vel­oped in part by Robin Shat­tock, who has al­so de­signed the Covid-19 can­di­date.

To com­mer­cial­ize the vac­cine, the col­lege set up a new com­pa­ny called VacE­quity Glob­al Health with the Hong Kong-based in­vest­ment firm Morn­ing­side Ven­tures. Its goal will be to make the vac­cine as wide­ly avail­able as pos­si­ble, while still turn­ing a prof­it — pos­si­bly by sell­ing for slight­ly high­er prices in high-in­come than low-in­come coun­tries.

The vac­cine will be one of sev­er­al that en­ter the clin­ic in the com­ing weeks and months. Cure­Vac, one of the first biotechs to be­gin de­vel­op­ing a vac­cine and which al­so us­es mR­NA, said ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic that they would aim for tri­als in June. And to­day sci­en­tists in Sin­ga­pore said they would be­gin test­ing an mR­NA vac­cine from the US biotech Arc­turus in Au­gust. — Ja­son Mast

As­traZeneca re­veals more of man­u­fac­tur­ing plan, adds an­oth­er part­ner

The streak of man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply deals As­traZeneca has struck for Ox­ford’s Covid-19 vac­cine, cou­pled with rapid progress on the clin­i­cal front, ap­pears to have em­bold­ened the com­pa­ny in di­al­ing up its hopes, with CEO Pas­cal So­ri­ot pre­dict­ing that the pro­tec­tion would last for about a year, as re­port­ed by Reuters.

Un­der ide­al cir­cum­stances — which would in­volve enough vol­un­teers giv­en place­bo get in­fect­ed by the coro­n­avirus — re­sults of the on­go­ing Phase III tri­als will be ready in Au­gust or Sep­tem­ber.

“We are man­u­fac­tur­ing in par­al­lel,” he added. “We will be ready to de­liv­er from Oc­to­ber if all goes well.”

Through a glob­al net­work of part­ners, As­traZeneca said it’s se­cured ca­pac­i­ty for 2 bil­lion dos­es through 2021. A grow­ing list of part­ners have re­served more than half of that col­lec­tive­ly: 400 mil­lion dos­es for Eu­rope in its lat­est deal with France, Ger­many, Italy and the Nether­lands; 300 mil­lion for the US; 100 mil­lion for the UK; and 400 mil­lion to low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries by the end of the year.

On Tues­day the phar­ma gi­ant added Co­bra Bi­o­log­ics to the con­trac­tor fold, task­ing the UK man­u­fac­tur­er with pro­vid­ing GMP man­u­fac­ture of the vac­cine can­di­date AZD1222.

Co­bra had be­gun work­ing with Ox­ford’s Jen­ner In­sti­tute in March, be­fore As­traZeneca jumped on board with its pow­er­house in­fra­struc­ture. The sci­en­tists who de­vel­oped the re­com­bi­nant ade­n­ovirus vec­tor im­mu­niza­tion were think­ing about mass pro­duc­tion ear­ly on; some of the com­pa­nies that they had tapped for their man­u­fac­tur­ing con­sor­tium, such as Ox­ford Bio­med­ica, have since teamed up with As­traZeneca.

“The agree­ment with As­traZeneca comes at an op­por­tune time for us as we bring three ad­di­tion­al vi­ral vec­tor suites on­line as part of our on­go­ing ad­vanced ther­a­pies ex­pan­sion pro­gramme,” Pe­ter Cole­man, chief ex­ec­u­tive at Co­bra, said in a state­ment. — Am­ber Tong

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