With COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing still scaling up and the scarcity of some supplies, most of the vaccine doses available so far have been distributed in 75 countries while 115 countries are still waiting, World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said at the Global C19 Vaccine Supply Chain and Manufacturing Summit.
FDA approvals in February nearly doubled those of the prior month, although biopharma regulatory data, aside from efforts targeting COVID-19, continue to decline.
With the prevalence of central nervous system disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and stroke increasing annually, the need for novel therapeutics to treat neurologic and psychiatric disorders has never been greater. Unfortunately, even though there is a significant unmet medical need, because of the high risk and low approval rates of drugs targeting those devastating diseases, in the past decade big pharma companies have been dramatically reducing their R&D spending on CNS disorders, noted Naheed Kurji, president and CEO of Toronto-based Cyclica Inc.