Covid-19 roundup: Catal­ent signs an­oth­er Covid-19 man­u­fac­tur­ing deal; Eli Lil­ly's an­ti­body part­ner grabs $175M+

Just a few days af­ter al­ly­ing it­self with phar­ma gi­ant J&J, the con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing play­er Catal­ent has signed up to do the pro­duc­tion work for a small US biotech in the ear­ly stages of tak­ing a shot at an ul­tra-low dose vac­cine for Covid-19.

About a week ago Arc­turus Ther­a­peu­tics tout­ed pre­clin­i­cal an­i­mal da­ta in­di­cat­ing that even at a sin­gle dose 2 µg, their mR­NA ther­a­py LU­NAR-COV19 had a sig­nif­i­cant rate of con­ver­sion among mice. All the usu­al caveats ap­ply here on pre­clin­i­cal ro­dent stud­ies — which typ­i­cal­ly lead to a dead end — but the re­searchers at Duke-NUS Med­ical School in Sin­ga­pore sound­ed op­ti­mistic about its chances.

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