It was a year of turmoil in Europe as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the fall-out from the COVID-19 pandemic shaped the fortunes of the life sciences industry in 2022. After years of tension, Russia’s attempt to annex Ukraine on Feb. 24 caused outrage and disruption and was unanimously opposed on humanitarian grounds by the life sciences and pharma industry.

RQ Biotechnology Ltd. (RQ Bio) has announced that the first of its discovered monoclonal antibodies to prevent COVID-19 in vulnerable patients, AZD-3152, has entered clinical trials.

Astrazeneca plc is beefing up its cell therapy capabilities in immuno-oncology by acquiring Neogene Therapeutics BV for an initial outlay of $200 million. There’s up to $120 million more on the table for undisclosed milestones and what the companies called a “non-contingent consideration.” Even without the additional earnouts, the deal represents a profitable return for Neogene’s shareholders. The Amsterdam-based firm had raised $110 million in a series A round in 2020, which represented the largest A round in Europe that year. Since then, it has started to move its first program, an autologous engineered T-cell receptor (TCR) T-cell therapy directed against up to five neoantigens, toward a phase I trial in patients with solid tumors.

Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), a key gatekeeper on the path to the U.K. market, is backing away from five COVID-19 treatments. No longer recommended in a draft guidance were Ronapreve (casirivimab + imdevimab) from Roche Holding AG, Xevudy (sotrovimab) from GSK plc, and Evusheld (tixagevimab + cilgavimab) from Astrazeneca plc. NICE also recommended discontinuing use of Lagevrio (molnupiravir) from Merck and Co. Inc. and Veklury (remdesivir) from Gilead Sciences Inc.

AZD-4820 was evaluated in a cell viability assay performed in 30 human cancer cell lines, defining 12 different types of cancer, and testing a dose-range of multiplicity of infection (MOI); potent oncolytic activity was observed with EC50 values of <0.1 MOI in nearly all of the tested cells.

Election day has come and gone in the U.S., but the question of which party will control Congress remains unanswered, signaling that the country is as divided as ever politically and ideologically. While Democrats and Republicans may agree on problems in the life sciences sector, they often disagree on how to address them.

Pfizer Inc.’s bivalent prefusion vaccine for protecting newborns from severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) hit one of its two primary endpoints in its phase III study, which was good enough for the company to stop enrollment and plan to submit a BLA to the U.S. FDA by year-end. PF-06928316 is one of six RSV vaccines in active phase III development globally, which includes an Astrazeneca plc-Sanofi SA collaboration plus one from GSK plc. Pfizer’s is the only one developed for infants by way of maternal immunization and for older adults.

It’s been a long road, but Astrazeneca plc’s anti-CTLA4 antibody, tremelimumab, finally earned its first U.S. FDA nod, cleared for use in combination with anti-PD-L1 drug Imfinzi (durvalumab) to treat patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The commercial impact of the dual checkpoint therapy, however, remains to be seen, as it goes up against Roche Holding AG’s combination of Avastin (bevacizumab) and Tecentriq (atezolizumab), which gained standard-of-care status in first-line HCC in 2021.