LONDON – Biontech SE is looking ahead from the announcement on Nov. 9 of 90% efficacy in the interim analysis of the phase III trial of its COVID-19 vaccine to outline shipping and distribution plans.
Enthusiasm stayed high but abated somewhat throughout the day as Wall Street took in the positive interim phase III results from Biontech SE and Pfizer Inc. with the COVID-19 vaccine candidate BNT-162b2.
According to BioWorld, almost $85 billion was raised by public and private biopharma companies globally in the second and third quarters alone, bringing the dollars generated to date to more than $100 billion – a total that smashes the existing record of about $69 billion that was raised in 2015.
DUBLIN – In what continues to be a year like no other, European biotechnology firms engaged in drug development raised $4.783 billion in equity financing during the third quarter. It is an unprecedented level of funding for the sector.
The Astrazeneca plc and Oxford University phase III trial of their adenovirus-based coronavirus vaccine is back up and running in the U.K. after a week’s worth of study and decision-making. The company said it still plans to report data from the study by the end of this year.
LONDON – The U.K. government has signed a €1.4 billion (US$1.7 billion) advance purchase agreement with French biotech Valneva SE, for the supply of up to 190 million doses of its attenuated COVID-19 vaccine, VLA-2001.
With strong results in hand from the phase I stage of its phase I/II study testing a would-be COVID-19 subunit vaccine, Novavax Inc.’s president of R&D, Gregory Glenn, said “it’s possible we could go down in the dose” as work proceeds and get similar efficacy.
As Pfizer Inc. and Biontech SE start their massive phase II/III safety and efficacy trial evaluating a single nucleoside-modified messenger RNA candidate from their BNT-162-based vaccine program against SARS-CoV-2, smaller, privately held Codagenix Inc. plans a different approach.
The U.S. government will pay $1.95 billion to Pfizer Inc. and Biontech SE for the first 100 million doses of their jointly developed mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine once Pfizer manufactures it and receives the FDA’s approval or emergency use authorization. The two companies agreed, as part of Operation Warp Speed, to begin delivering 300 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in 2021.
