Senate Proposes $16B To Fund The Next Wave Of Covid-19 Vaccines, Therapeutics In 2023 – Endpoints News

July 28, 2022 02:30 PM EDT

Don’t call it Operation Warp Speed 2.0, but Senate Democrats on Thursday proposed $22 billion in 2023 emergency supplemental funding for the next phase of the pandemic, including $16 billion to support the R&D, manufacturing, purchase, and distribution of vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics and other medical countermeasures.

The influx of new funds, if passed and agreed to with their House counterparts, would arrive as, according to the US government spending website, Washington has already spent $3.83 trillion in response to Covid-19.

July 28, 2022 10:40 AM EDT

With Keytruda bulling its way past the $5 billion mark for Q2 sales, you could say that the top execs at Merck can be believed when they say how keenly interested they are in using its cash reserves for new M&A and licensing deals. Just don’t ask what they’re negotiating to buy right now.

The analysts largely tiptoed around the biggest buzz about Merck today: that it’s engaged in discussions to buy Seagen for $40 billion-plus. They’re a polite bunch that needs to be on a first-name basis with CEO Rob Davis. But Davis was willing to emphasize that the pharma giant has the means and the intent to do more deals.

July 29, 2022 05:55 AM EDT

While Rich Nelson is out as interim CEO of vTv Therapeutics, he will be continuing as the company’s EVP of corporate development as Paul Sekhri takes the mantle of president and CEO on Aug. 1.

In Nelson’s four short months as head of the North Carolina-based biotech, he saw G42 Healthcare, a UAE health tech company, invest in vTv and agree to collaborate on vTv’s Phase III study for a type I diabetes treatment. Prior to Nelson’s stepping in as CEO, Deepa Prasad had served as CEO, though she too was only there for a few months.

July 29, 2022 07:00 AM EDT

In Mani Mohindru’s telling, Novasenta is “as biotech-y as you can get.”

The CEO of the latest startup out of UPMC’s sprawling research apparatus says her biotech is looking for novel targets to make new cancer therapies, as compared to the proliferation of biotechs popping up with programs going against targets that are already validated or in the public domain.

The company has secured $40 million in Series A funds led by the Pittsburgh institution, based on 10 years of work out of the Hillman Cancer Center’s Tumor Microenvironment Center. Three programs have been propelled to center stage, with one or two of them slated for IND-enabling studies later next year with the aim of clinical trials kicking off in 2024, Mohindru told Endpoints News.

July 29, 2022 06:56 AM EDT

As monkeypox spreads across dozens of countries, one of the few biotechs publicly working on a new vaccine for the virus is gearing up to enter the clinic in the first half of next year.

The study of Tonix Pharmaceuticals’ live virus vaccine will occur at Kenya Medical Research Institute, or KEMRI, in the East African country, the partners said Thursday. While Kenya has no reported cases of the virus that leads to painful lesions, the country is close to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which had 163 cases as of July 27, according to a CDC tracker.

July 29, 2022 06:39 AM EDT

GSK announced this morning in a London Stock Exchange filing that Laurie Glimcher, president and CEO of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has advised the company of her intention to retire from its board of directors on Oct. 13.

The company did not disclose why Glimcher has decided to move on now after more than five years as a non-executive director, but Glimcher’s appointment heralded a much bigger interest in oncology at GSK, and she’s moving on now as GSK’s R&D chief Hal Barron also hits the exit.

July 29, 2022 07:08 AM EDT

Seagen’s keeping quiet on the M&A front as rumors fly around a potential Merck buyout. Instead, the Washington State-based pharma company used its Q2 call with investors to discuss its push to build out the pipeline, while raising its full-year guidance.

Seagen $SGEN netted $498 million last quarter, up 28% from the same quarter last year. It’s also raising its full-year guidance to between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion, up from $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion predicted in Q1 of this year. Seagen is expecting $1.5 billion in net sales, and between $50 and $60 million in collaboration and license agreement revenues. Last quarter, Seagen estimated it would only net $25 to $30 million from that sector.

July 29, 2022 06:56 AM EDT

Ali Ansary, a trained physician, had realized by 2018 that cancers would no longer be treated just with traditional chemotherapy and radiations. Immunotherapy was becoming big, and yet there was no way for doctors to get a complete picture of how immune cells worked at the cellular level when used for cancer therapy, he says.

“How do we get to know more information about this system that is more than inflammatory markers?” he wondered.

July 27, 2022 10:13 AM EDT

With booming Shingrix sales filling its financial sails in the wake of the Haleon spinout, the executive team at New GSK repeatedly touted the blockbuster opportunity presented by their RSV vaccine during Q2 calls Wednesday, promising that the best is yet to come as they upped their guidance for the second half while raising the prospect of more M&A.

“We are delivering,” CEO Emma Walmsley told analysts, with commercial momentum, pipeline advances and recent late-stage BD moves that are likely to be replicated before the year is out now that they have more flexibility after the Haleon spinout.

July 27, 2022 01:45 PM EDTUpdated 06:47 PM

In a rare move for any regulator, the European Medicines Agency said Wednesday it’s begun reviewing data on the use of an experimental cancer drug for treating Covid-19, even though the Miami-based sponsor, Veru, has not submitted an application.

The EMA review by its emergency task force follows the release of study results earlier this month showing the drug, known as sabizabulin, reduced the risk of death by 55% in a study of 134 volunteers hospitalized with Covid-19 who received sabizabulin and 70 who received placebo. But experts have been cautious about overinterpreting the results, which were published in the NEJM, particularly as there have been very few effective treatments for those hospitalized with Covid.