Covid-19 roundup — Re­gen­eron zooms in on cock­tail; BioN­Tech shares sky­rock­et on quick Pfiz­er al­liance

On the morn­ing af­ter the Bay Area or­dered res­i­dents of six coun­ties to “shel­ter in place” amid vary­ing lev­els of lock­down around the world, here are the lat­est in­dus­try up­dates:

— Lead­ing the hunt for an­ti­bod­ies that can neu­tral­ize the coro­n­avirus that caus­es Covid-19, Re­gen­eron said it’s as­sem­bled a large pool of can­di­dates — hun­dreds of an­ti­bod­ies — from which it will se­lect two to make a “cock­tail treat­ment.” While the an­ti­bod­ies are be­ing se­lect­ed, the com­pa­ny will get its Ve­lociMab plat­form in place to pre­pare cell lines for clin­i­cal-scale pro­duc­tion. Re­gen­eron en­vi­sions en­ter­ing hu­man stud­ies in a cou­ple months, with a goal to pro­duce “hun­dreds of thou­sands of pro­phy­lac­tic dos­es per month” by the end of sum­mer. All of this comes a lit­tle over a month af­ter Re­gen­eron first threw its name in­to the coro­n­avirus R&D hat. Fol­low­ing this same ap­proach has led the biotech to an Ebo­la reg­i­men that best­ed three oth­er treat­ments. In ad­di­tion to de­vel­op­ing an­ti­bod­ies that can serve both as treat­ment and as a pro­phy­lax­is be­fore peo­ple are ex­posed to SARS-CoV-2 (an ap­proach Vir is al­so tak­ing), Re­gen­eron has al­so rushed its IL-6 drug Kez­vara — ap­proved for arthri­tis — in­to a late-stage tri­al test­ing its abil­i­ty to tack­le the lung in­flam­ma­tion that re­sults from the vi­ral in­fec­tion.

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