Moderna Inc.’s phase III win with its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, lifted spirits while validating the Cambridge, Mass.-based firm’s platform, as Wall Street buzzed with comparisons between the prospects that have yielded late-stage data thus far.
According to an analysis conducted by BioWorld of the third-quarter 2020 financial reports filed by public biopharmaceutical companies with market caps greater than $1 billion, and excluding big pharma companies, the amount that was invested in research and development (R&D) during the nine-month period increased by almost 21% compared to the same period last year. The spending was bolstered by companies turning their attention to focus their research on therapies and vaccines to tackle COVID-19.
With COVID-19 cases once again surging across the globe and several countries considering targeted lockdowns, vaccines remain the best hope of restoring a sense of normalcy amidst the pandemic. For vaccines to work though, people must have enough confidence in the efficacy and safety that they’re willing to get vaccinated when the vaccines become available. That’s why the emergency use authorization (EUA) guidance the FDA released Oct. 6 for COVID-19 vaccines is so important.
As his firm unveiled early data with its spike protein-targeting COVID-19 therapy, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s chief scientific officer, George Yancopoulos, said that, even if researchers come up with a drug that works, coming up with efficient point-of-care diagnostics remains “a major societal imperative.”
Spurred by reports of biopharma executives exercising stock options in conjunction with announcements about COVID-19 vaccine developments and government contracts, U.S. lawmakers want to close the loopholes that make such actions legal.
While its mRNA COVID-19 vaccination effort gets the most attention these days, Moderna Inc. is also moving in other directions as the company will lead mRNA discovery programs drawn from its early stage pipeline in new collaborations with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Italy’s Chiesi Farmaceutici SpA. These two deals highlight the “huge opportunity for mRNA beyond SARS-CoV-2 and vaccines,” Piper Sandler analysts wrote Sept. 16.
The U.S. government bought 100 million doses of mRNA-1273 from Moderna Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., with a new award worth up to $1.525 billion, a deal that drops the implied cost per dose below that of several other companies receiving funding through the government program.
A safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine may be available by the end of the year or early next year, as will the supplies needed to deliver and administer hundreds of millions of doses. That’s the message five biopharma executives delivered to a House subcommittee July 21 as they updated U.S. lawmakers on the progress their companies are making on the vaccine front.
