The fu­ture of mR­NA, J&J's vac­cine ad­comm, Mer­ck­'s $1.85B au­toim­mune bet and more

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Get ready for FDA’s third Covid-19 vac­cine

On the heels of a ring­ing en­dorse­ment from FDA re­view­ers ear­li­er in the week, J&J‘s sin­gle-dose vac­cine — which proved 66% ef­fec­tive at pre­vent­ing symp­to­matic Covid-19, and 85% ef­fec­tive at stop­ping se­vere dis­ease 28 days af­ter ad­min­is­tra­tion — the ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee con­vened by the agency vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to rec­om­mend its emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion. It was “a rel­a­tive­ly easy call,” ac­cord­ing to one of the com­mit­tee mem­bers — al­though that doesn’t mean they didn’t have ques­tions. Ja­son Mast has the high­lights from the dis­cus­sion, in­clud­ing new in­for­ma­tion from the com­pa­ny, on this live blog.

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