An NIH trial for an Eli Lilly antibody, one of two coronavirus drugs President Trump has touted and urged the FDA to authorize in recent weeks, has been halted over a safety concern. And it is unlikely to start again for at least two weeks.

The study, known as ACTIV-3, compared the Lilly antibody plus remdesivir to the antibody plus placebo in hospitalized Covid-19 patients and was slated to enroll up to 10,000 volunteers. In a statement released late Tuesday, NIAID said that they paused the study after, in an initial sample of roughly 300 patients, one group appeared to be doing better than the other, although they did not specify which group that was.

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Setting the stage for an extraordinary one-day meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee this Thursday, the FDA has cleared 2 experts of financial conflicts to help beef up the committee. And regulators went on to specify the safety, efficacy and CMC input they’re looking for on EUAs, before they move on to the full BLA approval process.

All of this has already been spelled out to the developers. But the devil is in the details, and it’s clear from the first round of posted responses that some of the top players — including J&J and Pfizer — would like some adjustments and added feedback. And on Thursday, the experts can offer their own thoughts on shaping the first OKs.

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As catalysts go, few loom larger than the aducanumab adcomm slated for Nov. 6.

With its big franchise under assault, Biogen is betting the ranch that its mixed late-stage Alzheimer’s data can squeak past the experts and regulators and get onto the market. And the topic — after a decade of Alzheimer’s R&D disasters in what still represents the El Dorado of drug markets — remains in the center ring of discussions around late-stage pipeline prospects.

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Roche is pouring $500 million into its Canadian headquarters in Mississauga, Ontario to set up a new hub that will coordinate logistics for its global supply chain.

Over the 5-year investment, the Swiss pharma giant expects to add 200 jobs over next year and another 300 by the end of 2023.

Introduced as a $190 million global pharmaceutical development site in 2011, the campus currently houses Roche’s Canadian commercial unit as well as product development, global procurement and pharma informatics. The new expansion will see it organize manufacturing across 13 plants and 11 sites, according to FiercePharma.

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With a medley of adverse events hobbling the late-stage development of vaccines and drugs, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla’s latest — extended — timeline for the mRNA approach they’re working on with BioNTech is giving some top analysts added confidence that the pharma giant can come up with the regulatory goods next month.

Parsing Bourla’s language in his comments last week, SVB Leerink’s Geoffrey Porges notes that Bourla’s decision to say they “may” be able to nail down the positive efficacy of their vaccine in a matter of days — a big change from his earlier certainty — may also indicate a delay on that to early November.

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Bristol Myers Squibb CEO Giovanni Caforio does not waste time. He also likes everyone around him to keep up.

Anyone reading over the insider account filed with the SEC of the back-and-forth over his $13 billion buyout of MyoKardia $MYOK could reach only one conclusion: The CEO who had willingly crafted a $74 billion Celgene acquisition had found something else he liked — and he was willing to pay a nice premium to get it.

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Stéphane Bancel’s new estimated timeline for Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine puts his company on track to score an emergency use authorization in December — given the interim Phase results turn out positive in November.

Per the trial protocol, the first interim analysis of the Moderna vaccine’s efficacy will happen when 53 people in the entire study, which is enrolling 30,000 volunteers, get symptomatic disease. The data safety monitoring board would then review the unblinded results and check the breakdown between the vaccinated and those given placebo.

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After nearly a year of public advocacy and often rancorous ethical debate, human challenge trials for Covid-19 vaccines are getting off the ground in London.

The UK government’s Covid-19 Vaccine Taskforce and the contract research firm Open Orphan announced today a £10 million ($13 million) plan to test experimental Covid-19 vaccines in volunteers who are intentionally exposed to the novel coronavirus. The studies, which won’t launch until early 2021, come after 9 months of debate over whether such studies were safe and would actually hasten vaccine development, and they follow a long history of researchers using challenge models to study other respiratory viruses, including flu and the coronaviruses that cause the common cold.

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With plans afoot to file an NDA for what could be its first approved drug, Cara Therapeutics is pivoting its focus to commercialization. And Swiss company Vifor Pharma is willing to surrender up to $440 million to market the candidate in the US.

Cara $CARA CEO Derek Chalmers said an NDA submission is coming this quarter for their intravenous drug Korsuva in chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus (CKD-aP), a severe itching condition. The Stamford, CT-based biotech read out positive topline data from a Phase III pivotal study back in April, and announced plans to approach EMA regulators shortly after filing with the FDA.

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