J&J dis­putes re­port it’s drop­ping JLabs plans for UK; Take­da takes Zi­ka vac­cine in­to PhI

→ The Tele­graph re­port­ed that J&J is plan­ning to pull the plug on its plans to open a JLabs fa­cil­i­ty in the UK, cit­ing the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty around Brex­it. But a com­pa­ny spokesper­son tells me it’s all tosh: “This sto­ry is com­plete­ly un­found­ed and we have ac­tu­al­ly asked for a re­trac­tion.”

→ Take­da has pushed its Zi­ka virus vac­cine can­di­date (TAK-426) in­to a Phase I clin­i­cal tri­al 15 months af­ter the bio­phar­ma com­pa­ny re­ceived a con­tract to de­vel­op a Zi­ka vac­cine from the De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices; Of­fice of the As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Pre­pared­ness and Re­sponse; and Bio­med­ical Ad­vanced Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (BAR­DA).

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