The U.S. NIH’s Feb. 17 announcement that it’s funding a study of the effects of remdesivir in treating COVID-19 in pregnant women is welcome news, but it begs the question of why it took so long given the risk of more severe disease in that population.
Just months after a modest IPO, shares of Immunome Inc. (NASDAQ:IMNM) climbed 75.6% on Feb. 18, closing at $39.01. Driving the momentum was an announcement that pseudovirus testing indicates that its antibody cocktail, IMM-BCP-001, appears capable of neutralizing several SARS-CoV-2 variants, an emerging challenge to currently available vaccines and pandemic management efforts.
Investing in biopharma has never been for the faint of heart. So headline figures unveiled from a clinical development success report during the BIO CEO & Investor Conference Feb. 17, putting the average likelihood of a drug entering phase I development ultimately achieving approval at 7.9% and the average drug development timeline at 10.5 years, appear largely unsurprising. But the addition of machine learning capabilities to the mix helped identify those factors that have the greatest impact on predictive outcome.
Aside from its place in the history books as a global pandemic that nearly locked down the world, COVID-19 could have a lasting, more positive legacy of finally opening U.S. biopharmaceutical clinical trials to greater diversity.
DUBLIN – The most solid conclusion that can be drawn from Immunic Inc.’s phase II trial of IMU-838 in hospitalized COVID-19 patients is that a reduction in the need for invasive ventilation is no longer a useful endpoint for studies of COVID-19 drugs.
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Algernon, Asklepios, Astrazeneca, Biophytis, Cidara, Eli Lilly, Evgen, Immunic, Inhibikase, Kintara, Mesoblast, Mind Medicine, Moebius, Pfizer, PTC, Redhill, Salarius, Scisparc, Selecta, Silence.
BioWorld tracked a total of 295 phase I, II and III clinical news items in January, a rise of 39% compared with the number recorded during the pre-pandemic month of January 2020.
HONG KONG – A Japanese phase III study of Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.’s interleukin-6 inhibitor Actemra (tocilizumab) in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 pneumonia has read out, expanding what’s known about the drug’s use in the pandemic, which had been inconclusive until recently, though is now known to reduce mortality in the vulnerable population.
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