Just two days af­ter the US bought 600,000 more dos­es of Vir and GSK’s Covid-19 an­ti­body sotro­vimab to guard against Omi­cron, Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy an­nounced a part­ner­ship ex­pan­sion with the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion for its T-cell vac­cine pro­gram.

The part­ner­ship had been in place for a few years with Vir’s T-cell vac­cine pro­gram tar­get­ing TB and HIV. The foun­da­tion is putting up $50 mil­lion — $10 mil­lion in the form of a grant and the rest in an eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment.

The arrange­ment is for an an­ti­body re­search ini­tia­tive, fo­cus­ing on a func­tion­al cure for HIV and malar­ia pre­ven­tion, ac­cord­ing to a joint state­ment. Part of that ini­tia­tive will al­so in­clude a proof-of-con­cept clin­i­cal tri­al, look­ing at en­gi­neered an­ti­bod­ies de­signed to both in­hib­it vi­ral repli­ca­tion and spread in peo­ple in­fect­ed with HIV. And ad­di­tion­al­ly, the part­ners will see if these an­ti­bod­ies can con­fer a vac­cine-like pro­tec­tive ef­fect that could be ap­plic­a­ble to durable HIV sup­pres­sion with­out the use of more com­mon­ly used an­ti­retro­vi­ral ther­a­py. The same con­cept will be ap­plied against malar­ia as part of pre­clin­i­cal re­search.

George Scan­gos

“We look for­ward to ap­ply­ing the lessons learned thus far in COVID-19, chron­ic he­pati­tis B virus in­fec­tion and in­fluen­za to ad­vance our ef­forts to­ward cur­ing HIV and pre­vent­ing malar­ia,” Vir CEO George Scan­gos said in a state­ment.

Just last month, the FDA cleared the first long-act­ing HIV-pre­ven­tion in­jectable, hand­ing Vi­iV a his­toric OK. The com­pa­ny’s treat­ment, Apre­tude, is first giv­en as two in­jec­tions a month apart, then every two months af­ter.

“To­day’s ap­proval adds an im­por­tant tool in the ef­fort to end the HIV epi­dem­ic by pro­vid­ing the first op­tion to pre­vent HIV that does not in­volve tak­ing a dai­ly pill,” FDA di­rec­tor of an­tivi­rals De­bra Birnkrant said at the time.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying so hard to politicize the FDA and demonize the federal government that he entered into an alternate universe on Monday evening in describing a recent FDA action to restrict the use of two monoclonal antibody, or mAb, treatments for Covid-19 that don’t work against Omicron.

Without further ado, let’s break down his statement from last night, line by line, adjective by adjective.

Bristol Myers Squibb recently joined 11 of its peer pharma companies in limiting how many contract pharmacies can access certain drugs discounted by a federal program known as 340B.

Bristol Myers is just the latest in a series of high-profile pharma companies moving in their own direction as the Biden administration’s Health Resources and Services Administration struggles to rein in the drug discount program for the neediest Americans.

Amgen wanted to know how people with asthma really felt about daily life with the disease. So it bought a promoted tweet on Twitter noting the not-so-simple realities of life with asthma and ended the post with a #DearAsthma hashtag, a megaphone emoji and a re-tweet button.

That was just over one week ago and the responses haven’t stopped. More than 7,000 posts so far on Twitter replied to #DearAsthma to detail struggles of daily life, expressing humor, frustration and sometimes anger. More than a few f-bombs have been typed or gif-ed in reply to communicate just how much many people “hate” the disease.