Covid-19 roundup: Flush with $486M con­tract, As­traZeneca signs Lon­za up to man­u­fac­ture an­ti­bod­ies; BioN­Tech's Ugur Sahin ex­pects vac­cine da­ta 'in a fort­night'

Days af­ter scor­ing a $486 mil­lion BAR­DA con­tract to de­vel­op and man­u­fac­ture its long-act­ing an­ti­body com­bo for Covid-19, As­traZeneca has tapped Lon­za to pro­duce the drug sub­stance at its mid-scale fa­cil­i­ty in Portsmouth, NH.

The drug, dubbed AZD7442, puts to­geth­er two an­ti­bod­ies, first dis­cov­ered by sci­en­tists at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter, de­rived from con­va­les­cent pa­tients who re­cov­ered from a SARS-CoV-2 in­fec­tion. As­traZeneca li­censed them in June and has since fur­ther en­gi­neered them with half-life ex­ten­sion and re­duced Fc re­cep­tor bind­ing.

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