Hopes continue to rise as the COVID-19 vaccine beat goes on and Operation Warp Speed (OWS) lives up to its name, with Moderna Inc. netting another U.S. Department of Defense contract worth about $1.97 billion for another 100 million doses – an order that brings to about $6 billion the company’s government contracts for the product, which was granted emergency use authorization (EUA) earlier this month. Read More
China has added 119 new drugs to its national reimbursement drug list (NRDL) with an average price cut of 50.64%, a move that biopharmaceutical insiders said will further encourage drug innovation at home, despite lower drug prices. More innovative drugs, notably all homegrown PD-1 inhibitors, are included in the latest NRDL that will take effect from March 1, 2021 to the end of 2023. Read More
LONDON – The pharmaceutical industry exhaled sharply and prepared to labor over the fine print in 1,246 pages of text after the EU and U.K. announced they had agreed a post-Brexit trade deal on Christmas Eve. The EU/U.K. Trade and Cooperation Agreement means the risk of a crash-out Brexit on Dec. 31 is over, and there will be no tariffs or quotas on the import and export of goods. Read More
The amount of money flowing into the biopharma industry via grants and collaborations with nonprofit and government entities is a 272% increase over last year, with efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic accounting for 84% of the total for 2020. Read More
PERTH, Australia – Australia is employing some new genomic tools to help identify SARS-CoV-2 infections and track them within communities. Illumina Inc. and the University of Melbourne have partnered to establish the Illumina-University of Melbourne Genomics Hub – a first for the Asia-Pacific region – which will bring together the best of genomic expertise and technology in Australia. Read More
Startup Faze Medicines Inc. launched in early December with a series A funding of $81 million, and an A list of investors, led by Third Rock Ventures – an indicator of the attention condensates are attracting from the biopharma industry. Faze CSO Rachel Meyers, though, named another indicator for condensates’ blue-ribbon status: rumors have it that the 7th edition of Molecular Biology of the Cell – a workhorse textbook for 30 years’ worth of students in the field – will be the first to include information on condensates. Read More
The latest global regulatory news, changes and updates affecting biopharma, including: Arguments against transparency fall flat; CMS unveils push toward digital collection of quality measures. Read More
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Actinium, Arcturus, Intra-Cellular, Nanology, VBL. Read More
Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Arcturus, Biontech, Brand Institute, Cognition, Innovare, Junshi, Karolinska, Olatec, Pfizer, Pluristem, Umecrine. Read More
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Alkermes, Ampio, Arcturus, Capricor, Celltrion, Clovis, Chi-Med, Moleculin, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer. Read More
