In the rush to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, integral parts of the equation are being overlooked in the U.S., according to a whistleblower complaint filed this week by Rick Bright over his removal as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). Even if millions of doses of vaccine are ready to go by January, as the NIH’s Anthony Fauci a few weeks ago said could happen, there may not be enough needles and syringes to deliver those doses.

DUBLIN – Kurma Partners closed its third biotech fund, Kurma Biofund III, at €160 million (US$174 million), €10 million ahead of its initial target. The Paris-based fund will allocate the bulk of the capital to therapeutics firms, but it is also open to opportunistic investments in med tech, particularly in digital health applications and in biotech-med tech convergence, partner Peter Neubeck told BioWorld.

Saudi Arabia, which last year made its first appearance on the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) Priority Watch List, is back on the list this year and is being singled out for an out-of-cycle review due to what the USTR calls its “unfair commercial use” and “unauthorized disclosure” of proprietary data submitted for drug approvals.

Public drug and device companies may want to think twice before eagerly jumping on the COVID-19 bandwagon with announcements overselling their efforts to develop or repurpose products to treat patients infected with the coronavirus.

LONDON – These are hardly times for a fanfare, but this month saw the unveiling of a new name in bioprocessing, following the formal closing of the $21.4 billion sale of GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences to Danaher Corp. The business, now renamed Cytiva, has turnover of $3.3 billion, nearly 7,000 employees and operations in 40 countries. More than 75% of FDA-approved biologic drugs use its products in their manufacture.

The Korea Export Import Bank (KEXIM) took a step toward fulfilling its mandate to finance Korean companies’ overseas expansion by seeking managers for a new ₩400 billion (US$328 million) fund.

As the demand increases for ventilators to treat Americans with severe symptoms of COVID-19, another shortage is being exacerbated – a shortage of the drugs needed to treat patients on ventilators.

As the world goes to war with COVID-19, the U.S. is ripping open the purse strings to fund mobilization against both the coronavirus and the economic devastation it’s causing.

“We look forward to the day where we can get back to normal,” U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday at a COVID-19 news conference in which reporters sat every-other-seat apart. In an unusually somber tone, the president said it now looks like it will be at least July or August before the outbreak “washes through.”