Warp Speed bets $356M to mass manufacture a Merck drug for severe Covid-19

December 23, 2020 07:19 AM EST

Warp Speed bets $356M to mass manufacture a Merck drug for severe Covid-19

Jason Mast

Editor

The White House is betting big on a new type of treatment for Covid-19, a drug that results from one late-stage trial suggesting it could drastically improve patients’ odds of recovery from severe disease.

HHS and the Department of Defense announced a $356 million deal to mass manufacture MK-7110, the immune system modifying antibody that Merck acquired in their surprise $425 million buyout of OncoImmune last month. The deal would allow Merck to produce between 60,000 and 100,000 doses of the drug by June 2021.

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Data Literacy: The Foundation for Modern Trial Execution

Kristin Mauri

In 2016, the International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) updated their “Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice.” One key shift was a mandate to implement a risk-based quality management system throughout all stages of a clinical trial, and to take a systematic, prioritized, risk-based approach to clinical trial monitoring—on-site monitoring, remote monitoring, or any combination thereof.

January 27, 2021 07:02 AM ESTUpdated 11:05 AM

Coronavirus

Covid-19 roundup: EU and AstraZeneca trade blows over slowdowns; Unusual unions pop up to test antibodies, vaccines

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Max Gelman

Associate Editor

Nicole DeFeudis

Associate Editor

After coming under fire for manufacturing delays last week, AstraZeneca’s feud with the European Union has spilled into the open.

The bloc accused the pharma giant on Wednesday of pulling out of a meeting to discuss cuts to its vaccine supplies, the AP reported. AstraZeneca denied the reports, saying it still planned on attending the discussion.

Early Wednesday, an EU Commission spokeswoman said that “the representative of AstraZeneca had announced this morning, had informed us this morning that their participation is not confirmed, is not happening.” But an AstraZeneca spokesperson later called the reports “not accurate.”

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January 27, 2021 10:11 AM EST

R&D

Pfizer's big blockbuster Xeljanz flunks its post-marketing safety study, renewing harsh questions for JAK class

Jason Mast

Editor

When the FDA approved Pfizer’s JAK inhibitor Xeljanz for rheumatoid arthritis in 2012, they slapped on a black box warning for a laundry list of adverse events and required the New York drugmaker to run a long-term safety study.

That study has since become a consistent headache for Pfizer and their blockbuster molecule. Last year, Pfizer dropped the entire high dose cohort after an independent monitoring board found more patients died in that group than in the low dose arm or a control arm of patients who received one of two TNF inhibitors, Enbrel or Humira.

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Adeno-associated virus-1 illustration; the use of AAVs resurrected the gene therapy field, but companies are now testing the limits of a 20-year-old technology (File photo, Shutterstock)

January 25, 2021 04:54 PM ESTUpdated January 26, 07:11 PM

In Focus

After 3 deaths rock the field, gene therapy researchers contemplate AAV's future

Jason Mast

Editor

Nicole Paulk was scrolling through her phone in bed early one morning in June when an email from a colleague jolted her awake. It was an article: Two patients in an Audentes gene therapy trial had died, grinding the study to a halt.

Paulk, who runs a gene therapy lab at the University of California, San Francisco, had planned to spend the day listening to talks at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting, which was taking place that week. Instead, she skipped the conference, canceled every work call on her calendar and began phoning colleagues across academia and industry, trying to figure out what happened and why. All the while, a single name hung in the back of her head.

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January 25, 2021 06:45 AM ESTUpdated 07:07 AM

Coronavirus

Merck scraps Covid-19 vaccine programs after they fail to measure up on efficacy in another major setback in the global fight

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

After turning up late to the vaccine development game in the global fight against Covid-19, Merck is now making a quick exit.

The pharma giant is reporting this morning that it’s decided to drop development of 2 vaccines — V590 and V591 — after taking a look at Phase I data that simply don’t measure up to either the natural immune response seen in people exposed to the virus or the vaccines already on or near the market.

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Anthony Fauci, NIAID director (AP Images)

January 27, 2021 03:40 PM EST

Coronavirus

As new Covid-19 task force gets underway, threat looms of vaccine, monoclonal antibody-resistant variants

Jason Mast

Editor

Hours before President Biden’s Covid-19 team gave their first virtual press conference, the famed AIDS researcher David Ho delivered concerning news in a new pre-print: SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351, the variant that emerged in South Africa, is “markedly more resistant” to antibodies from convalescent plasma and vaccinated individuals.

The news for several monoclonal antibodies, including Eli Lilly’s bamlanivimab, was even worse: Their ability to neutralize was “completely or markedly abolished,” Ho wrote. Lilly’s antibody cocktail, which was just shown to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalizations or death, also became far less potent.

January 26, 2021 10:30 AM ESTUpdated 11:18 AM

Coronavirus

Eli Lilly demonstrates that 2 antibodies beat 1 for guarding against severe Covid-19. But can that solve the first antibody’s problem amid slow uptake?

Jason Mast

Editor

It seems safe to say that two antibodies are better than one.

Eli Lilly released the largest results yet on Tuesday for their Covid-19 neutralizing antibody cocktail, announcing that the combo reduced deaths and hospitalizations in coronavirus patients by 70%. Across 1,000 patients, there were 11 such events in the treatment group and 36 in the placebo group.

The breakdown for deaths alone was even starker: 10 in the placebo group and 0 in the treatment group. Lilly added that the drug hit secondary endpoints for reducing viral load and alleviating symptoms, although they did not disclose numbers.

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George Yancopoulos (L) and Len Schleifer (Regeneron)

January 26, 2021 07:35 AM ESTUpdated 07:48 AM

R&D

Coronavirus

Regeneron touts positive preliminary impact of its Covid antibody cocktail, preventing symptomatic infections in high-risk group

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Regeneron flipped its cards on an interim analysis of the data being collected for its Covid-19 antibody cocktail used as a safeguard against exposure to the virus. And the results are distinctly positive.

The big biotech reported Tuesday morning that their casirivimab and imdevimab combo prevented any symptomatic infections from occurring in a group of 186 people exposed to the virus through a family connection, while the placebo arm saw 8 of 223 people experience symptomatic infection. Symptomatic combined with asymptomatic infections occurred in 23 people among the 223 placebo patients compared to 10 of the 186 subjects in the cocktail arm.

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Pascal Soriot, AP

January 27, 2021 09:21 AM EST

Bioregnum

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot severs an unusual board connection, steering clear of conflicts while retaining important alliances

CSL Behring chief Paul Perreault scored an unusual coup last summer when he added AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot to the board, via Zoom. It’s rare, to say the least, to see a Big Pharma CEO take any board post in an industry where interests can simultaneously connect and collide on multiple levels of operations.

The tie set the stage for an important manufacturing connection. The Australian pharma giant agreed to supply the country with 10s of millions of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, once it passes regulatory muster.

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