Val­ne­va’s Scot­tish unit has re­ceived a $27 mil­lion grant to fund the R&D of man­u­fac­tur­ing its Covid-19 vac­cine VLA2001.

The in­vest­ment comes from the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment agency. Two grants will dis­trib­ute the mon­ey over the next three years, and ben­e­fit the man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Liv­ingston.

One grant, worth $16.65 mil­lion, will sup­port R&D con­nect­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing VLA2001. A sec­ond, worth $9.9 mil­lion, will sup­port R&D for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of oth­er dis­eases. Among those oth­er vac­cines is VLA1553, a sin­gle-shot vac­cine against the mos­qui­to-borne vi­ral in­fec­tion chikun­gun­ya. That is al­so man­u­fac­tured in Liv­ingston.

“From the on­ly in­ac­ti­vat­ed, whole virus Covid-19 vac­cine can­di­date in clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment in Eu­rope to the most clin­i­cal­ly ad­vanced vac­cine can­di­date against chikun­gun­ya in the world, Scot­tish En­ter­prise’s in­vest­ment will sup­port progress across Val­ne­va’s re­search and de­vel­op­ment port­fo­lio – as well as jobs and growth in Scot­land,” CEO Thomas Lin­gel­bach said in a state­ment.

Mod­er­na part­ners with Latin Amer­i­can Phar­ma

In a move to ad­vance the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Mod­er­na’s Covid-19 shot in Latin Amer­i­ca, the biotech has inked a deal with a phar­ma na­tive to the con­ti­nent to help make and dis­trib­ute its shot.

Adi­um Phar­ma will com­mer­cial­ize Spike­vax across 18 coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca. That list in­cludes Brazil, Mex­i­co, Colom­bia and Ar­genti­na. The com­pa­ny will look to add up to 100 peo­ple to its team as well.

Stéphane Ban­cel

“Our new part­ner­ship with Adi­um will help en­sure broad ac­cess and de­liv­ery of our Mod­er­na Covid-19 vac­cine to peo­ple across Latin Amer­i­ca,” said CEO Stéphane Ban­cel. “A pres­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca is a key part of our glob­al com­mer­cial strat­e­gy. These part­ner­ships and the ex­pan­sion of our glob­al com­mer­cial foot­print po­si­tion Mod­er­na to play an im­por­tant role in pro­vid­ing health­care se­cu­ri­ty against Covid-19 and fu­ture vac­cine-pre­ventable dis­eases.”

Mod­er­na has on­ly got­ten emer­gency au­tho­riza­tion in five of those coun­tries so far, but Mod­er­na’s Ro­man Saglio told Bloomberg that the deal, which will lead to a sig­nif­i­cant ramp up of man­u­fac­tur­ing by Mod­er­na, will help the com­pa­ny be a lead­ing vac­cine provider for the re­gion.

Though Decibel Therapeutics has largely pivoted toward gene therapies for the inner ear, its lead clinical candidate simply aims to protect cancer patients from chemotherapy-induced hearing loss. On Tuesday, the biotech presented its first efficacy data for the program, and execs like what they see.

Decibel reported interim results from a Phase Ib study showing the experimental drug, dubbed DB-020, largely protected a small group of patients from losing their hearing. Researchers used a particularly unique study design, administering the compound in one of each patients’ ears before they received cisplatin chemotherapy and placebo in the other.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

In November, Pfizer disclosed it’s spun out the Phase II dual JAK1/TYK2 inhibitor to a startup formed in collaboration with an unnamed, experienced partner.

We now know who the partner is. And as Pfizer and Roivant officially take the wraps off Priovant Therapeutics, the companies reveal that they have started two registrational trials of the drug, brepocitinib, as part of a broader plan to develop a big, first-in-class franchise spanning multiple orphan and specialty autoimmune diseases.