A day after announcing it would pump $120 million into a Michigan manufacturing facility for Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/ritonavir), Pfizer Inc. produced new data it plans to use in an U.S. NDA submission for treating COVID-19. While some data for the oral antiviral fell short of statistical significance, other companies are not far behind Pfizer in their drive for FDA acceptance using similar approaches.
The Biden administration recently reported that a new round of free rapid tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus is available to the public, a development that coincides with a new surge of the latest sub-variant of the omicron variant. However, the administration is also expected to renew the public health emergency (PHE) for the pandemic, even as the White House continues to press Congress for another $22 billion in pandemic-related funding.
The commercial success of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has other companies in the space “looking in the attic, so to speak,” to see if they have any patents they can assert against components of the vaccines so they can get a percentage of the sales, Aziz Burgy, a patent attorney, told BioWorld. Given the global spread of the pandemic and how quickly it came on, the vaccines have generated billions of dollars in sales in a short period of time, and other companies want a share, he said. He compared today’s patent infringement cases against the vaccine producers to the litigation seen in the early days of the smartphone revolution when other high-tech companies scrambled for a piece of Apple’s and Samsung’s profits.
With the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility having more COVID-19 vaccine doses available than have been requested by the countries it was designed to help, industry groups are pushing back against the proposed TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines.
With the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility having more COVID-19 vaccine doses available than have been requested by the countries it was designed to help, industry groups are pushing back against the proposed TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver for COVID-19 vaccines that has been agreed to by the EU, India, South Africa and the U.S.
Chinese state-owned enterprise China Meheco Group Co. Ltd. has signed a deal with Pfizer Inc. to be its mainland China partner for the commercialization of the COVID-19 pill Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir), which won conditional approval from China’s NMPA earlier this year.
Chinese state-owned enterprise China Meheco Group Co. Ltd. has signed a deal with Pfizer Inc. to be its mainland China partner for the commercialization of the COVID-19 pill Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir), which won conditional approval from China’s NMPA earlier this year.
LONDON – The U.K. Recovery trial has added a fourth drug to the list of therapies it has shown are effective in treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients, demonstrating the JAK inhibitor Olumiant (baricitinib) reduces the risk of death by 13% in seriously ill patients. That effect is in addition to treatment with dexamethasone, which became standard of care after the Recovery trial showed it reduced mortality by one-third in patients on ventilators.
