FDA ap­proves an­oth­er RSV op­tion, this time it's Sanofi and As­traZeneca’s an­ti­body drug for in­fants

The fight against one of the world’s most com­mon res­pi­ra­to­ry virus­es just got an­oth­er weapon.

On Mon­day, the FDA ap­proved Bey­for­tus, an an­ti­body drug co-de­vel­oped by Sanofi and As­traZeneca. Bey­for­tus, al­so known as nir­se­vimab, is giv­en as a one-time in­tra­mus­cu­lar in­jec­tion to in­fants, pro­tect­ing them from res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­cy­tial virus, or RSV. The drug won Eu­ro­pean ap­proval in No­vem­ber.

Bey­for­tus is the lat­est in a suite of new med­i­cines against RSV, a virus that typ­i­cal­ly puts 58,000 to 80,000 young chil­dren in the US in the hos­pi­tal every year. Ear­li­er this year, the FDA ap­proved two RSV vac­cines for old­er adults: GSK’s Arexvy and Pfiz­er’s Abrys­vo. Wall Street an­a­lysts ex­pect all these new med­i­cines to grow in­to block­busters over the next decade.

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