TORONTO – Startup CEOs may sometimes be forgiven a little exuberance on learning their technology has received the high sign from regulatory officials. So it was when the head of Monitio Intelligence Inc. Ben Su sifted through his email at his office in Coburg Ontario and saw the Health Canada logo at the top of the letter. “I was actually jumping up and down when I received that authorization letter. I was very excited,” Su said. Since then Su has been overseeing installation of an automated COVID-19 screening system.
The latest global regulatory news, changes and updates affecting medical devices and technologies, including: FDA reissues policy for coagulation systems; FDA announces recall of Penumbra’s Jet 7; Stericycle to buy buses as part of settlement; Athena agrees to $18M fine; WHO refreshes essential diagnostics list; TGA pulls two pandemic-driven exemptions.
DUBLIN – Amid a bitter dispute between the European Commission (EC) and Astrazeneca plc over supplies of the latter’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, the EC’s drug regulator, the EMA, recommended approval of the product in question, COVID-19 Vaccine Astrazeneca (formerly AZD-1222).
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Amarin, Arvelle, Ascentage, Bellicum, Biogen, Biontech, Eisai, Gan & Lee, Incyte, Karyopharm, Mabxience, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, RDIF, Roche, Stada, Tetra, Vertex.
Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: AC Immune, Fibrogen, Moleculin, Recordati, Rigel.
Sweeping in behind Novavax Inc.’s positive phase III COVID-19 vaccine data is Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot COVID-19 vaccine, which met all the primary endpoints and key secondary endpoints in its phase III study, according to an interim analysis that found it to be 85% effective overall in preventing severe disease.
LONDON – A fourth COVID-19 vaccine is on the road to approval in Europe, with Novavax Inc. announcing positive interim data from the phase III U.K. trial of NVX-CoV2373. The vaccine was 89.3% effective at a time when there was a high rate of infection in the country, and in the face of the newly identified variant, B 1.1.7, which is more transmissible. There also was positive data, though slightly less sparkly, from a phase IIb study in South Africa, where NVX-CoV2373 showed 60% efficacy in preventing mild, moderate and severe COVID-19 disease.
Swift Biosciences Inc. released an S gene panel for SARS-CoV-2 that covers 100% of the gene even with minimal viral titers. The S gene controls the spike protein, which enables the virus to bind to cells and affects transmissibility, and has accumulated multiple mutations in the concerning variants recently discovered in the U.K., South Africa, Brazil, Denmark and the U.S. The panel is expected to enable rapid scaling of surveillance efforts of the new strains and can be run by any lab using the Illumina system.
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