COVID-19
With billions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines expected to be available by year’s end, and a global population of 7.8 billion, public health officials are scrambling to deliver the vaccines in ways that are equitable and effective.
Russia’s minister of health, Mikhail Murashko, indicated that the country plans a nationwide program to vaccinate its population against COVID-19 starting in October.
Please check out the biopharma industry coronavirus (COVID-19) stories that are trending for August 3, 2020.
As usual, there was plenty of clinical trial news last week. Here’s a look.
Merck is joining the ranks of pharmaceutical companies that have a COVID-19 vaccine candidate in clinical development. Merck will move its candidate into clinical trials in the third quarter of this year, the company announced this morning.
GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi struck a $2.1 billion deal with the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program to supply an initial 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate under development by the two companies.
As Moderna launched its Phase III clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine this week, a member of the company’s board of directors, Elizabeth “Betsy” Nabel, resigned to avoid any conflict of interest.
The vaccine was developed by Preston Estep, a former graduate student of Harvard University geneticist George Church.
This morning Johnson & Johnson announced preclinical data that showed its lead vaccine candidate protected against infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The U.S. FDA issued a new template for clinical test developers that is designed to assist these companies in developing and submitting emergency use authorization (EUA) for COVID-19 tests that can be performed at home or in other settings besides laboratories.
PRESS RELEASES