Deals, Development and Manufacturing

PPD announced it will provide drug development services to advance Pfizer’s portfolio.

Vico Therapeutics has raised $31 million (€27 million) in a Series A financing round, which the company will use to further advance its Antisense OligoNucleotides lead platform.

The companies will combine Intravacc’s OMV delivery platform with S-proteins with Celonic’s CHOvolution mammalian cell expression system to produce B and T-cell responses against SARS-CoV-2.

The acquisition gives LGM access to Nexgen’s manufacturing and warehouse distribution facilities and a pilot plant.

Avacta Group has expanded its partnership with Daewoong Pharmaceutical to include Affimer molecules that target viruses, such as coronavirus.

The companies will utilize Avid’s upstream and downstream process development and drug substance manufacturing services in conjunction with Argonaut’s parenteral drug product fill-finish services for the delivery of CGMP parenteral drug products for use in clinical studies.

Sangamo will receive a $75 million upfront license fee payment and will be eligible to earn up to $720 million in other development and commercial milestone payments, including up to $420 million in development milestones and up to $300 million in commercial milestones.

The transaction is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2020.

Sterling Pharma Solutions has signed a deal with Moleculin Biotech to support the development of WP1122, a potential COVID-19 treatment.

DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences has entered into a research collaboration in microbiome science with the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University.

The UK government is committing a further £100 million (US $127 million) to ensure that there is capability to manufacture a successful COVID-19 vaccine at scale in the UK.

Stevanato Group and Colanar have signed an agreement for lab scale fill/finish capabilities to study container closure systems at Stevanato Group’s US TEC in Boston, MA.

Pending approval of the Pfizer and BioNTech mRNA-based vaccine candidate against SARS-COV-2, the companies will supply the US government with an initial 100 million doses.

Catalent has unveiled investment plans to create a European center of excellence for clinical biologics formulation development and drug product fill/finish services.

The project will focus on providing a faster route to clinical studies for AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine, AZD1222.

Innovate UK has awarded Epsilogen with further grant funding for the development of the next generation antibody treatments for ovarian cancer.

The UK government has secured early access to 90 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from the BioNTech/Pfizer alliance and Valneva.

Catalent has unveiled plans to invest in a European center of excellence for clinical biologics formulation development and drug product fill/finish services at its facility in Limoges, France.

Study reports immune and T-cell response from CanSino COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

The project will focus on providing a faster route to clinical studies for AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine, AZD1222.

Dewpoint’s condensate platform works to target individual molecules and interacting groups of molecules within condensate communities to create new treatments for incurable and untreatable diseases.

Through the deal, Roche will gain co-commercialization rights to pralsetinib, Blueprint Medicine’s investigational, once-daily oral precision therapy for the treatment of RET-altered non-small cell lung cancer, medullary thyroid cancer, and other types of thyroid cancer

BARDA and DOD have awarded a $450-million contract to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to manufacture and supply an investigational double antibody cocktail in development for treating COVID-19.

SGS has announced the receipt of approval from Belgium’s Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAMHP) to begin a new clinical trial of a potential treatment for patients with COVID-19 related respiratory failure.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Medicago have announced a collaboration for the development and evaluation of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

The agreement will fund the late-stage clinical development, a Phase III clinical trial, large-scale manufacturing, and the delivery of 100 million doses of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, NVX‑CoV2373.

Emergent is entering into a five-year agreement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals for the large-scale drug substance manufacturing of Johnson & Johnson’s investigational COVID-19 vaccine, Ad26.COV2-S.

Intravacc will license CimCure’s iBoost technology, and the companies will jointly develop a COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

The company has provided updates on its COVID-19 tests under development with Adeptrix and Cytiva, respectively.

The companies are entering into a license agreement to provide CSL Behring with exclusive global rights to etranacogene dezaparvovec, uniQure’s investigational gene therapy for patients with hemophilia B.