French vac­cine com­pa­ny Val­ne­va and Ger­man CD­MO IDT Bi­ologi­ka have de­cid­ed to ter­mi­nate their man­u­fac­tur­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion for Val­ne­va’s Covid-19 vac­cine.

IDT Bi­ologi­ka was orig­i­nal­ly tasked with mak­ing Val­ne­va’s VLA2001 vac­cine, but the deal has been halt­ed due to “the de­liv­ery of in­ac­ti­vat­ed Covid-19 bulk vac­cine to Val­ne­va.” A state­ment from Val­ne­va al­so lists a lack of or­ders and suf­fi­cient in­ven­to­ry as the oth­er rea­sons.

With the man­u­fac­tur­ing of the vac­cine sus­pend­ed, Val­ne­va will pay €36.2 mil­lion ($35.8 mil­lion) to IDT in com­pen­sa­tion along with €4.5 mil­lion ($4.4 mil­lion) for pur­chas­ing spe­cial­ized equip­ment.

Val­ne­va will con­tin­ue to de­liv­er dos­es of the vac­cine to EU mem­ber states that had al­ready or­dered it and will keep in­ven­to­ry on hand in case of any uptick in de­mand. Val­ne­va al­so said that it is reach­ing out to dif­fer­ent na­tions across the world to ship its re­main­ing eight to 10 mil­lion dos­es over the next year.

The com­pa­ny had ini­tial­ly signed a pur­chas­ing agree­ment with the EU last year to sup­ply 60 mil­lion dos­es. In the sum­mer, how­ev­er, the EU changed its pur­chase to around 1.25 mil­lion dos­es.

Pen­ny stock biotech’s Phase II/III tri­al for ear­ly Covid-19 in­fec­tion fails to reach pri­ma­ry end­point

Well in­to the pen­ny stock zone, Adamis Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has hit a ma­jor road­block for its Covid-19 treat­ment.

The San Diego biotech an­nounced Wednes­day its Phase II/III clin­i­cal tri­al eval­u­at­ing the risk of us­ing Tem­pol in high-risk pa­tients with an ear­ly Covid-19 in­fec­tion had failed to hit the pri­ma­ry end­point of “sus­tained clin­i­cal res­o­lu­tion” by day 14.

The Da­ta Safe­ty Mon­i­tor­ing Board (DSMB) al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the tri­al be shut down due to a lack of ef­fi­ca­cy. While Adamis em­pha­sized that no safe­ty con­cerns were raised, it will put a hold on the tri­al and fig­ure out Tem­pol’s next move. Ac­cord­ing to Clin­i­cal­Tri­als.gov, 248 pa­tients par­tic­i­pat­ed in the tri­al.

“We are ob­vi­ous­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the study did not meet its end­points. Much of the pre­clin­i­cal work on Tem­pol for COVID-19 ex­am­ined the ef­fects of the drug on se­vere ill­ness. This tri­al did not meet its pri­ma­ry end­point, but we are ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that vac­ci­na­tions and the less vir­u­lent vari­ants (Omi­cron) dur­ing the tri­al pe­ri­od may have ob­scured an ef­fect of Tem­pol,” said Adamis CMO Ron Moss in a state­ment.

In­vestors will not be hap­py as the com­pa­ny’s stock price has al­ready dropped even fur­ther in­to the pen­ny stock neb­u­la, where it has been since 2019. The price $ADMP has dropped 44% since Wednes­day’s mar­ket open­ing to $.20, mark­ing an 80% drop since Sep­tem­ber last year.

Takeda on Tuesday morning made an announcement that almost 3,000 people with the rare disease known as hypoparathyroidism were fearing.

Due to unresolved supply issues and manufacturing woes, Takeda said it will cut its losses and discontinue its hypoparathyroidism drug, known as Natpara (parathyroid hormone), halting all manufacturing of the drug by the end of 2024.

The decision to not re-commercialize Natpara will be a blow to not only the 2,400 people who were awaiting supplies of their reliable injection since 2019, but also the additional nearly 400 people who were accessing the drugs via the company’s Special Use Program as Takeda sought to resolve these manufacturing issues over the past five years.

Astellas and Pantherna have expanded their November 2021 pact surrounding the latter’s mRNA platform to include a new target organ, the duo announced Tuesday morning, though they did not specify what that target is.

German biotech Pantherna is home to two platform technologies — one that designs mRNAs for non-vaccine therapies and another that designs LNPs. Astellas and Pantherna’s deal appears to mainly revolve around the first platform, which Astellas said it is using to research direct reprogramming, or turning cells from one kind into another without an intermediate stem cell phase.

KalVista took a beating Tuesday after announcing it would scrap a Phase II trial for one of its experimental drugs.

The biotech said in an early morning press release that it is terminating the study for KVD824 after multiple patients in every treatment group saw unsafe, elevated levels of certain liver enzymes. By ending the trial now, KalVista hopes to save some money and funnel it toward another study for its lead program, CEO Andrew Crockett said in a statement.

Adamis Pharmaceuticals is slowly tumbling down, and the biotech is looking at all its options.

After a Phase II/III trial failure last month that sent the penny stock player down an additional 50% to just 15 cents a share, the company said Monday that it is examining options to get the best value for its investors. A statement from Adamis indicates that alternatives include anything from a partnership to a sale of Adamis’ two commercial products, Zimhi and Symjepi.