It’s been a good week for Covid-19 vac­cines, and per­haps an even bet­ter one for the hack­ers try­ing to steal Covid-19 vac­cine da­ta.

In a brief note Wednes­day, the Eu­ro­pean Med­i­cines Agency an­nounced that it had been “the sub­ject of a cy­ber-at­tack.” Pfiz­er and their Ger­man biotech part­ner BioN­Tech con­firmed their da­ta had been “un­law­ful­ly ac­cessed’ as part of the breach, al­though they cau­tioned to Reuters that they did not be­lieve par­tic­i­pants’ per­son­al in­for­ma­tion had been changed and that the EMA had as­sured them the hack would not in­ter­fere with the time­line for ap­proval.

Stolen doc­u­ments could po­ten­tial­ly give use­ful in­for­ma­tion to oth­er coun­tries de­vel­op­ing a vac­cine, as well as in­for­ma­tion on oth­er com­pa­nies and sys­tems in­volved in de­vel­op­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing it.

The lat­est in­ci­dent adds to a string of vac­cine-di­rect­ed cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty at­tacks that have re­port­ed­ly struck through­out the pan­dem­ic. News re­ports of such ef­forts have picked up in re­cent weeks.

In May, as vac­cine ef­forts were ac­cel­er­at­ing, US of­fi­cials warned Chi­nese hack­ers were tar­get­ing vac­cine re­search, prompt­ing a swift de­nial from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment.

In Ju­ly, though, Britain’s Na­tion­al Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty Cen­tre re­leased a re­port ac­cus­ing Russ­ian-backed groups, in­clud­ing one known as “Cozy Bear,” of tar­get­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies work­ing on vac­cines. The Cen­tre said that US and Cana­di­an of­fi­cials shared their as­sess­ment, and The Tele­graph re­port­ed that the As­traZeneca-Ox­ford ef­fort had been at­tacked. Rus­sia de­nied in­volve­ment.

Then last month, Mi­crosoft said that a Russ­ian group named “Fan­cy Bear” and two North Ko­re­an groups named “Zinc” and “Ceri­um” at­tempt­ed to break in­to sys­tems at 7 phar­mas and re­searchers in 5 coun­tries. That in­clud­ed brute force ef­forts to at­tempt mil­lions of po­ten­tial pass­words and phish­ing schemes where hack­ers would pose as World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion of­fi­cials and so­lic­it peo­ple’s pass­words.

Last week, IBM said that hack­ers backed by for­eign gov­ern­ments had turned their at­ten­tion to the com­pa­nies that main­tain the cold chain nec­es­sary to ship and store mR­NA vac­cines. Among oth­er ef­forts, ad­ver­saries posed as an ex­ec­u­tive from the ma­jor cold chain com­pa­ny Haier Med­ical and so­licit­ed user­names and pass­words. The at­tacks were glob­al, IBM said.

With just days before President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 booster rollout is set to go into effect, an FDA advisory committee appeared on the verge of not recommending boosters for anyone in the US before a last-minute change of wording laid the groundwork for older adults to have access to a third dose.

The FDA’s adcomm on Vaccines and Related Biological Products (VRBPAC) roundly rejected Pfizer/BioNTech booster shots for all individuals older than 16 by a 16-2 vote Friday afternoon. Soon after, however, the agency posed committee members a new question limiting booster use to the 65-and-older population and individuals at high risk of disease due to occupational exposure or comorbidities.

AstraZeneca and Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo think they’ve struck gold with their next-gen ADC drug Enhertu, which has shown some striking data in late-stage breast cancer trials and early solid tumor tests. Getting into earlier patients is now the goal, starting with Enhertu’s complete walkover of a Roche drug in second-line breast cancer revealed Saturday.

Enhertu cut the risk of disease progression or death by a whopping 72% (p=<0.0001) compared with Roche’s ADC Kadcyla in second-line unresectable and/or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients who had previously undergone treatment with a Herceptin-chemo combo, according to interim data from the Phase III DESTINY-Breast03 head-to-head study presented at this weekend’s #ESMO21.

In recent months, the battle for PD-(L)1 dominance has spilled over into early cancer with Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo all alone on the front lines. Keytruda now has another shell in its bandolier, and it could spell a quick approval.

Keytruda cut the risk of relapse or death by 35% over placebo (p=0.00658) in high-risk, stage 2 melanoma patients who had previously undergone surgery to remove their tumors, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-716 presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Merck has worked hard to bring its I/O blockbuster Keytruda into earlier and earlier lines of therapy, and now the wonder drug appears poised to make a quick entry into early advanced cervical cancer.

A combination of Keytruda and chemotherapy with or without Roche’s Avastin cut the risk of death by 33% over chemo with or without Avastin (p=<0.001) in first-line patients with persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-826 study presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

The FDA released briefing documents this week from the agency and Pfizer each outlining their arguments for today’s Covid-19 booster shot adcomm, but one thing conspicuously missing was the question on which panel members would be voting. But late Thursday night, regulators published that question.

Adcomm members will be asked whether or not the safety and efficacy data from Pfizer/BioNTech’s original Phase III study “support approval” of a booster shot at least six months after the second dose in individuals older than 16. The question notably excludes the real-world data from Israel and other analyses that Pfizer and the Biden administration had said would be a centerpiece of their arguments for boosters.