LONDON – Geopolitical tensions over the issue of access to COVID-19 vaccines intensified this week, after the CEO of French pharmaceutical company Sanofi SA said the U.S. government would get first access to its product because it was first to fund the research.

LONDON – The U.K. is launching a £28 million (US$34.5 million) project to sequence the whole genome of every COVID-19 patient in the country treated in intensive care, with the aim of uncovering host genetic factors that lead some people to be more severely affected by the infection. The study will involve up to 20,000 people currently or previously treated in one of 170 intensive care units (ICUs), whose genomes will be compared to 15,000 people with a confirmed infection who had mild or moderate symptoms.

DUBLIN – The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a public-private research partnership between the European Commission (EC) and Europe’s pharmaceutical industry, has boosted funding for a fast-track response to the COVID-19 pandemic from €45 million (US$48.8 million) to €72 million.

LONDON – Computational biology specialist Precisionlife Ltd. has used UK Biobank data to find sepsis risk genes that are present specifically in patients who suffer severe COVID-19 infections and shown that 13 of those genes are known druggable targets.

LONDON – In a potent demonstration of how COVID-19 is transforming the U.K. clinical trial landscape, 47,000 patients have been recruited to studies investigating potential treatments for the infection in a little over two months.

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.

LONDON – The U.K. has started a fast track national trial of experimental drugs in COVID-19 patients, with Bergenbio ASA’s phase II cancer immunotherapy, bemcentinib, the first of six products that are due to join the study.

LONDON – A veteran of the European vaccines industry has brought together three companies in three countries, in what is described as an ultra-fast-track COVID-19 vaccine development program. From a standing start less than three months ago, the three biotechs, Reithera Srl in Rome, Leukocare AG in Munich, Germany, and Univercells SA in Brussels, Belgium, have advanced to GMP manufacturing, with first-in-human studies due to start in June.

DUBLIN – The Swiss biotech sector raised about CHF1.2 billion ($$1.2 billion) in equity investment in 2019, a significant downward dip on the last two years, but well ahead of its average annual raise of CHF800 million over the past decade, according to the newly published Swiss Biotech Report 2020.