It’s all hands on the vir­tu­al deck at the FDA. And the folks at CDER are con­sid­er­ing set­ting up a new on­line ap­proach to hold­ing ad­comm meet­ings go­ing for­ward.

Mark Senak, who writes the Eye on FDA blog, posed a se­ries of ques­tions for CDER, in­clud­ing one on ad­comms, which are be­ing in­ter­rupt­ed as the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic spreads in the US and around the globe.

As of now, the FDA is can­cel­ing all non-es­sen­tial meet­ings at the agency, in­clud­ing the ad­comms, through April. But CDER does see a pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty for go­ing vir­tu­al — a big deal in an in­dus­try that re­lies on these meet­ings to keep its R&D strat­e­gy in­tact.

Here’s the ex­change be­tween Senak and CDER on the ad­comms:

Does FDA plan on at­tempt­ing vir­tu­al ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee meet­ings?

As this re­mains a dy­nam­ic sit­u­a­tion, we will con­tin­ue to as­sess and cal­i­brate our ap­proach. Where pos­si­ble the agency will lever­age tech­nol­o­gy to host meet­ings al­low­ing for re­mote par­tic­i­pa­tion. We thank you for your pa­tience. In con­sid­er­ing nec­es­sary steps for pro­tecting pub­lic health, in­clud­ing our spon­sors, our com­mit­tee mem­bers and our work­force, we are can­celling or post­pon­ing all non-es­sen­tial meet­ings through the month of April. We will re­assess on an on-go­ing ba­sis for fu­ture months. Where pos­si­ble the agency will lever­age tech­nol­o­gy to host meet­ings al­low­ing for re­mote par­tic­i­pa­tion.

→ A con­ser­v­a­tive group called the Job Cre­ators Net­work — which in­cludes Home De­pot co-founder Bernard Mar­cus as a key backer — is call­ing on Pres­i­dent Trump to clear away the “red tape” and make hy­drox­y­chloro­quine more eas­i­ly avail­able.

The drug is fre­quent­ly cit­ed by Trump as a pos­si­ble short-term panacea for the Covid-19 out­break. It’s al­so un­cer­tain whether it will help at all or cause more dam­age than good — some­thing that is be­ing test­ed in a clin­i­cal pro­gram now. In the mean­time, it’s be­come one of the most pop­u­lar drugs avail­able, mak­ing sup­plies scarce. And that’s what the group wants Trump to fix.

“We’re not ad­vo­cat­ing that peo­ple should take the drug,” a spokesper­son told the Wall Street Jour­nal. “We’re ad­vo­cat­ing that doc­tors should have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­scribe it if they want to do so. The prob­lem is no one can find it. It’s a sup­ply-side is­sue.”

→ British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son has test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus — on Wednes­day, he ad­dressed Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment in the House of Com­mons.

Over the last 24 hours I have de­vel­oped mild symp­toms and test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus.

I am now self-iso­lat­ing, but I will con­tin­ue to lead the gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse via video-con­fer­ence as we fight this virus.

To­geth­er we will beat this. #Stay­Home­Save­Lives pic.twit­ter.com/9Te6aFP0Ri

— Boris John­son #Stay­Home­Save­Lives (@BorisJohn­son) March 27, 2020

→An­oth­er set of drug de­vel­op­ers have thrown their hat in­to the an­ti-Covid-19 ring. In ad­di­tion to pro­grams from Mod­er­na, which is al­lied with the NIH — and BioN­Tech, as well as Cure­Vac — Sanofi is al­so work­ing on an mR­NA vac­cine ap­proach with Trans­late Bio, in ad­di­tion to its pre­vi­ous­ly un­veiled tra­di­tion­al vac­cine pro­gram. (End­points Link)

Hep B vac­cine mak­er Dy­navax is al­so work­ing on a vac­cine, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land as part of a Coali­tion for Epi­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness (CEPI) ini­tia­tive.

→ Ex­ist­ing di­ag­nos­tic tests bank on PCR tech­nol­o­gy, which is en­gi­neered to hone in on the virus’ RNA genome. How­ev­er, if the per­son re­cov­ers from the coro­n­avirus in­fec­tion, that ev­i­dence dis­ap­pears. How­ev­er, an­ti­body tests — which re­ly on blood in­stead of nasal or throat swabs — are ex­pect­ed to re­veal who has had the in­fec­tion but was asymp­to­matic and has re­cov­ered. Once col­lect­ed, this in­for­ma­tion will re­veal the full scope of the pan­dem­ic and in­form con­tain­ment strate­gies across the globe. It will al­so help re­searchers work­ing on plas­ma ther­a­pies, which re­quire blood from sur­vivors.

New York-based Hen­ry Schein on Thurs­day said it was mak­ing avail­able an an­ti­body test (green­lit by the FDA un­der emer­gency guid­ance), which de­liv­ers re­sults with­in 15 min­utes from a pin­prick with no in­stru­men­ta­tion re­quired. The com­pa­ny ex­pects to have at least sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand tests avail­able by March 30 and sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased avail­abil­i­ty be­gin­ning in April, it said.

Mean­while, the Unit­ed King­dom is work­ing on its own an­ti­body tests; sci­en­tists in Sin­ga­pore have used to trace chains of trans­mis­sion, and the CDC re­port­ed­ly has plans for its own.

→ Iron­wood Phar­ma, which sells the bow­el drug Linzess with part­ner Al­ler­gan, said the pan­dem­ic is im­pact­ing en­roll­ment in its late-stage gas­troe­sophageal re­flux dis­ease tri­al. Near­ly 70% of the en­roll­ment tar­get has been hit, but the com­pa­ny no longer ex­pects to re­port top-line da­ta in the sec­ond half of 2020.

→ A glove short­age is re­port­ed­ly loom­ing, as Malaysia — the coun­try that dom­i­nates pro­duc­tion — reels from staff cuts in plants as a re­sult of a lock­down in the re­gion.

→ The US mil­i­tary, ac­cord­ing to Reuters, plans to stop dis­clos­ing some of the more “gran­u­lar da­ta” about in­fec­tions with­in its ranks, fear­ing the in­for­ma­tion may be used by ad­ver­saries.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

Revitope Oncology began 2020 hopeful that its cancer immunology platform would be finally ready to flourish. On Monday night, that platform nabbed the biotech its first collaboration.

The Massachusetts-based company has agreed to a licensing agreement with Shanghai-based Junshi Biosciences in which Revitope can receive up to $160 million in development and commercial milestones, plus royalties. In addition, Junshi will make a direct equity investment of $10 million, equal to 9.99% of Revitope shares, as the two companies work to develop a dual-antigen targeting cancer therapies.

In a press release issued in early June announcing a BLA acknowledgment letter from the FDA, CytoDyn CEO Nader Pourhassan said he is hopeful about getting a PDUFA date for its lead drug, leronlimab, on July 10.

Instead, they received a refuse-to-file letter today.

The company said the agency is just looking for “certain information needed to complete a substantive review.” No clinical trials are necessary; all that’s needed is additional analysis and a meeting with the FDA.

For now, the big focus in the hemophilia A gene therapy race has been centered on frontrunner BioMarin, with an expected OK just weeks away, and the crew from Sangamo/Pfizer, which has been looking to play catch-up with a pivotal study in the works.

But now Roche’s new gene therapy division at Spark has updated its own schedule, saying they’re looking at a Phase III start sometime next year as they optimize the dose and immunomodulatory regimen in order to avoid any future mishaps that could derail the program.