Shares in Bavarian Nordic A/S jumped after the company received an order of its monkeypox vaccine from an “undisclosed European country.” The order comes amid a small but growing number of cases of monkeypox in Europe, with nine reported in the U.K. and further cases in Portugal and Spain, bringing the total in the continent to more than 20.
A year after the World Health Organization's (WHO) Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response called for reforms to make COVID-19 the last pandemic, the panel remains solidly frustrated in its lack of progress.
While children younger than 5 in the U.S. still have no vaccine protection against COVID-19, those 5 and older may be able to get a third jab. The FDA authorized, May 17, the use of a single booster dose of the Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE vaccine for kids 5 through 11 years of age who completed the primary two-dose series at least five months earlier.
Valneva SE’s share price plummeted May 16 after the European Commission decided to terminate an advance purchase agreement for millions of doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate VLA-2001 because of delays in development. The company’s shares (Paris:VLA) fell more 19% to €9.65 (US$10.07) after it said it would reconsider its financial guidance for 2022.
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.
In an effort to increase global access to COVID-19 technologies, the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool and the Medicines Patent Pool finalized a licensing agreement May 12 with the U.S. NIH for research tools, early stage vaccines and diagnostics.
Beijing Zhifei Lvzhu Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has picked up rights to a whooping cough vaccine candidate from Intravacc B.V. on undisclosed terms. Zhifei Lvzhu gained exclusive rights to develop and commercialize the vaccine in China, as well as nonexclusive rights in Africa, South America, and selected Asian countries. In turn, Intravacc is eligible to receive milestone and up-front payments plus royalties on net sales of the vaccine, should it reach market.
With its focus on transformative high-risk, high-reward research to drive biomedical breakthroughs, the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) may be a good concept, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of increased investment in basic research at the NIH, according to the bipartisan leadership of U.S. House appropriators.
Newly appointed President and CEO Jackie Shea looks to have her work cut out for her, as Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. decided to ditch its phase II/III COVID-19 vaccination trial in favor of pursuing a booster strategy with INO-4800. That update, disclosed during Inovio’s first-quarter earnings late May 10 alongside a likely delay in filing for approval of HPV immunotherapy candidate VGX-3100, sent the stock (NASDAQ:INO) falling 27% May 11. Over the past year, shares have fallen more than 70%.
A congressional investigation into COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing failures at Emergent Biosolutions Inc. unveiled more troubling issues at the company’s Bayview facility in Baltimore, which had been awarded a lucrative U.S. government contract to produce vaccines for Johnson & Johnson.
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