Now that the US is swim­ming in Covid-19 vac­cines and the sup­ply has of­fi­cial­ly eclipsed the de­mand, it’s time for Amer­i­ca to lead the world and start ship­ping these ex­cess dos­es to coun­tries that des­per­ate­ly need them.

Un­like the IP waiv­er at the World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion, which Biden now sup­ports and will like­ly take years to trans­late in­to ac­tu­al shots in arms, the US could eas­i­ly do­nate just a tiny frac­tion of the more than 60 mil­lion dos­es of Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and J&J vac­cines sit­ting on Amer­i­can shelves right now.

Low-in­come coun­tries have re­ceived just 0.3% of all vac­cine dos­es in the world.

The sit­u­a­tion has be­come so dire in Bo­livia that its gov­ern­ment is turn­ing to a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny that doesn’t even make vac­cines, and Bo­livia will on­ly be able to ob­tain those if the com­pa­ny can ac­quire a com­pul­so­ry li­cense from the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment.

Mean­while, the US on Thurs­day will like­ly be­gin vac­ci­nat­ing mil­lions of ado­les­cents, many of whom aren’t like­ly to get se­vere cas­es of Covid-19, or who live in ar­eas where Covid-19 in­fec­tions are wan­ing.

Texas has even gone so far as to say it will no longer track if it’s wast­ing vac­cine dos­es. The state ba­si­cal­ly ad­vised providers to waste dos­es, telling them to “vac­ci­nate any­one who wants to be vac­ci­nat­ed, even if that means open­ing a new vial for that per­son with­out know­ing whether all dos­es will be used.”

More than 150 mil­lion Amer­i­cans (or 58% of adults) have now re­ceived at least one dose of vac­cine. Dozens of neigh­bor­ing coun­tries in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca haven’t even ad­min­is­tered 1 mil­lion dos­es.

CO­V­AX, a world­wide ini­tia­tive fo­cused on eq­ui­table ac­cess to Covid-19 vac­cines, is do­ing its best to help, ship­ping over 58 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es to 122 par­tic­i­pants. In March, the ini­tia­tive an­nounced the de­liv­ery of 2.3 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es to Bo­livia, El Sal­vador, Guatemala, Hon­duras, Ja­maica, Nicaragua and Pe­ru.

But the US could dou­ble that fig­ure with a ship­ment to­mor­row, and nev­er even blink at the loss of 5 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es.

Biden made beat­ing the coro­n­avirus his top pri­or­i­ty, but that win won’t of­fi­cial­ly oc­cur un­til the rest of the world can con­tain their own out­breaks.

David Kessler

So far, the US has shipped just 4 mil­lion As­traZeneca Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es, in­clud­ing 2.5 mil­lion to Mex­i­co and 1.5 mil­lion to Cana­da, ac­cord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny Tues­day from David Kessler, Biden’s Covid-19 CSO. Those dos­es aren’t au­tho­rized for use in the US, and like­ly nev­er would’ve been used in the US any­ways.

Kessler said he’s been on the phone with As­traZeneca reg­u­lar­ly over the last sev­er­al weeks to dis­cuss ship­ping about 60 mil­lion more of its dos­es out­side the US. The on­ly prob­lem — the dos­es were made at the trou­bled Emer­gent BioSo­lu­tions plant in Bal­ti­more and the FDA is still work­ing to see if they’re sal­vage­able, he said.

While the FDA con­tin­ues to re­view those dos­es, the US needs to start ship­ping our Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and J&J dos­es to our neigh­bors.

Biopharma’s resident antibody-drug conjugate expert Seagen has scored a clutch of oncology approvals in recent years, finding gold in what are known as “third-gen” ADCs. Now, another of their partnered conjugates is ready for prime time.

The FDA on Monday handed an accelerated approval to Seagen and Genmab’s Tivdak (tisotumab vedotin-tftv, or “TV”) in second-line patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer who previously progressed after chemotherapy rather than PD-(L)1 systemic therapy, the companies said in a release.

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

Exelixis added a thyroid cancer indication to its super-seller Cabometyx’s label on Friday — months before the FDA was expected to make a decision, and days before the company was set to unveil the final data at #ESMO21.

At a median follow-up of 10.1 months, differentiated thyroid cancer patients treated with Cabometyx (cabozantinib) lived a median of 11 months without their disease worsening, compared to just 1.9 months for patients given a placebo, Exelixis said on Monday.

For a first-time fund, Jeito Capital talks a lot about continuity.

Rafaèle Tordjman had spotlighted that concept ever since she started building the firm in 2018, promising to go the extra mile(s) with biotech entrepreneurs while pushing them to reach patients faster.

Coincidentally, the lack of continuity was one of the sore spots listed in a report about the European healthcare sector published that same year by the European Investment Bank — whose fund is one of the LPs, alongside the American pension fund Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Singapore’s Temasek, to help Jeito close its first fund at $630 million (€534 million). As previously reported, Sanofi had chimed in €50 million, marking its first investment in a French life sciences fund.