Three years after litigation started over technology used in an mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, Biontech SE is acquiring its adversary, Curevac NV, through an all-stock transaction valued at about $1.25 billion. The amount is lower than the $3 billion in backpay Curevac could win through the lawsuit if a low mid-single-digit royalty were awarded, Evercore ISI analysts Jon Miller and Umer Raffat said. But the legal uncertainty has weighed heavily on the company, which shed 30% of its workforce last July and sold off rights to two of its infectious disease vaccines.
If these top-line phase III results were a grade card for 12- to 15-year-olds, they would be on the honor roll: The Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective for the age group and produced robust antibody responses.
CAJICA, Colombia – The 33 countries across Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean are taking vastly different approaches to secure, acquire and distribute COVID-19 vaccines. A handful of the region’s wealthier countries have signed deals with vaccine suppliers or plan to manufacture them, but it is unclear how others will source or distribute vaccines to protect roughly 657 million people. Many are counting on the COVAX initiative.
A day after the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee lent its support to Moderna Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine, the agency granted it emergency use authorization (EUA). About 20 million doses will be delivered by the end of December and the rest in the first quarter of 2021, according to Moderna.
DUBLIN – Bowing to public and political pressure, the EMA has brought forward its review of BNT-162b2, the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer Inc. and Biontech SE, to Dec. 21, more than a week ahead of its originally scheduled date of Dec. 29.
Following a recent string of emergency use authorizations (EUA) for their jointly developed COVID-19 vaccine, BNT-162b2, Pfizer Inc. and Biontech SE said Dec. 14 that results from an ongoing German trial have helped illustrate "the multiple arms of the immune system that are activated" by the product to fight SARS-CoV-2. Separately, Moderna Inc. raised to 200 million the number of doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate it will supply to the U.S. government.
The latest global regulatory news, changes and updates affecting biopharma, including: Sacklers threatened with House subpoena; DEA proposes de-scheduling Alkermes drug; Marburg MCMs protected under PREP; OPDP: Don’t make risks a P.S.; U.S. Senators sound off on E&M offsets.
The extraordinary speed with which mRNA technology has delivered what appear to be safe and highly efficacious vaccines for preventing COVID-19 herald the start of a “golden age of vaccinology,” according to C. Buddy Creech, director of the vaccine research program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and principal investigator on the phase III trial of Moderna Inc.’s mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine.
LONDON – The first of 800,000 commercial doses of Pfizer Inc./Biontech SE’s COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the U.K., after the Medicines and Healthcare products Agency (MHRA) became the first regulator to grant conditional approval. A total of 1,500 immunization centers in the U.K. are preparing to receive the vaccine, with administration beginning Dec. 8.
The extraordinary speed with which mRNA technology has delivered what appear to be safe and highly efficacious vaccines for preventing COVID-19 herald the start of a “golden age of vaccinology,” according to C. Buddy Creech, director of the vaccine research program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and principal investigator on the phase III trial of Moderna Inc.’s mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine.
