Af­ter Serum In­sti­tute CEO Adar Poon­awal­la an­nounced last month that the world’s largest vac­cine mak­er stopped pro­duc­ing dos­es of Covid-19 vac­cines back in De­cem­ber, the in­sti­tute is look­ing to ex­pand.

The CEO told Reuters Mon­day that the com­pa­ny is con­sid­er­ing es­tab­lish­ing its first man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Africa in its next step to­ward glob­al ex­pan­sion af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly mass pro­duc­ing and sell­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es out of its In­dia-based fa­cil­i­ties.

Reuters not­ed that Africa was the on­ly con­ti­nent that did not have its own man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties for COVID shots, and Poon­awal­la did not act shy about his am­bi­tions for the vac­cine mak­er.

“It’s nev­er been a bet­ter time to be a vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­er. I’m look­ing at ex­pand­ing our man­u­fac­tur­ing across the globe,” Poon­awal­la said in an in­ter­view at the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in Davos, adding, “There are some great coun­tries out there: South Africa, Rwan­da, you know, to name a few that we’re look­ing at.”

Poon­awal­la said he was meet­ing some African of­fi­cials while in Davos to dis­cuss his plans. And when asked about pos­si­ble in­vest­ments, Poon­awal­la said a project like this would typ­i­cal­ly re­quire at least a ball­park fig­ure of $300 mil­lion.

Poon­awal­la’s plans put him in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with Mod­er­na, which has al­so been look­ing at es­tab­lish­ing its own vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Africa. Mod­ern en­tered a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the Kenyan gov­ern­ment ear­li­er this year for its first man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty on the con­ti­nent.

Jun­shi, Vigonvi­ta’s Covid-19 drug hits pri­ma­ry end­point in PhI­II tri­al

Jun­shi Bio­sciences has been work­ing on co-de­vel­op­ing an oral Covid-19 drug along­side Chi­nese biotech Vigonvi­ta Life Sci­ences— and as of this week, the drug met the pri­ma­ry end­point in a reg­is­tra­tion tri­al.

The biotech an­nounced that the oral nu­cle­o­side ana­log can­di­date, called VV116, reached the pri­ma­ry end­point of “time to sus­tained clin­i­cal re­cov­ery”  in a head-to-head bat­tle with Pfiz­er’s Paxlovid pill for “ear­ly treat­ment of mild to mod­er­ate Covid-19.”

Jun­shi al­so added that it will com­mu­ni­cate with a reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty re­gard­ing an NDA sub­mis­sion “soon” be­cause of the read­out — but no oth­er de­tails on tim­ing were pro­vid­ed.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Jun­Top Bio­sciences — a Jun­shi sub­sidiary — and Vigonvi­ta start­ed back in Sep­tem­ber, when they signed a de­vel­op­ment agree­ment to joint­ly work on both clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

The “co­op­er­a­tion ter­ri­to­ry” that the two biotechs agreed to is the whole world, ex­clud­ing 31 coun­tries, such as 19 in the Mid­dle East, and Rus­sia.

Ac­cord­ing to Jun­shi, sev­er­al clin­i­cal stud­ies for pa­tients with mild to mod­er­ate and mod­er­ate to se­vere Covid-19 are in progress, and some oth­er mul­ti-cen­ter, in­ter­na­tion­al Phase III tri­als will be un­der­way. If those in­ter­na­tion­al tri­als pan out, it could be the in-road to nab ap­proval in coun­tries such as the US, as the FDA has put its foot down on Chi­na-on­ly da­ta for can­cer drugs, al­though it re­mains un­known if that new pol­i­cy ex­tends to Covid-19 too.

The US government said late Wednesday that it will pay Pfizer and its partner BioNTech $3.2 billion upon receipt of the first 105 million Covid-19 vaccine doses, potentially the new Omicron-adapted boosters pending EUA.

Under this agreement, the US government also has the option to purchase up to 195 million additional doses, bringing the total number of potential new doses to 300 million. The US has now spent almost $15 billion on Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.

Lonza has been expanding its reach across the globe, bringing sites in China and the US online this year, but now they are looking closer to home for their next major investment.

The Swiss manufacturer on Friday announced plans to construct a large-scale commercial drug fill and finish facility in the town of Stein, Switzerland. The new facility will be delivered through an investment of approximately CHF 500 million, or $519 million, and is expected to be completed in 2026. The facility will also be constructed on the same campus as Lonza’s current clinical drug product facility.

Two weeks ago, Biohaven hit an all-time high in weekly Nurtec prescriptions. CEO Vlad Coric attributes at least some of that success to a new interactive Twitter campaign that encourages patients to free their feed of potential migraine triggers.

Earlier this month, Biohaven in partnership with Twitter launched the #RelieveYourFeed campaign that allows users to customize their app settings based on their migraine triggers.

Over the past few months, oncologists have been talking a lot about the ASCO conference. Not surprising considering its import and the study data presented, but what may be less expected is the second most talked about topic of health equity.

That’s according to data from The Harris Poll and the new expert network the researcher is building out. While the company has been doing deep data dives into specific health issues or conditions for pharma clients, it’s now monitoring influencer networks of therapy area specialists to find out what experts are really thinking about.