It’s that time again! We’ve got all the news you wanted this week, as long as you wanted to read about nothing except COVID-19, constantly. But to cheer things up, we’ve left out the story that we’re heading towards a worse financial impact than the 2008 crisis. Welcome back to: 

The Round-up Coronavirus Special

(Part 2 of 30,000)

PHARMA GIANTS COLLABORATE ON COVID-19 TREATMENT – Several big pharma companies, including Novartis and J&J, are collaborating to develop COVID-19 vaccines. The 15 companies will share data and proprietary molecule libraries, following a recent conference call. 

GILEAD ASKS FDA TO RESCIND ORPHAN DRUG STATUS OF REMDESIVIR AFTER CRITICISM – Gilead has requested that the FDA rescind the orphan drug status recently given to Remdesivir, a potential treatment for COVID-19. Gilead made the suggestion after public backlash that this could incentivise price-raises. Small-scale Chinese trials recently found the drug was efficacious in coronavirus patients. Demand for the drug is so high that last Saturday Gilead announced it will halt emergency access to it, due to “overwhelming demand”. 

NICE UPDATE COVID-19 GUIDELINES – NICE has published the first of three guidelines on managing patients with and without COVID-19. These cover critical care, kidney dialysis and treatment of patients receiving systemic anticancer treatments. Among other things, the guidelines set out discussions with patients and families about risks and benefits of treatments, and making decisions on the basis of medical benefit. 

In other news: 

R&D

Sanofi and Translate Bio working together on novel COVID-19 mRNA vaccine

Clinical Trials

Several leading potential treatments of COVID-19,including chloroquine and Abbvie’s Kaletra, offer disappointing clinical results

UK to begin clinical testing of COVID-19 next month

Manufacturing

UK Could trail in race for coronavirus vaccines after £66 million factory held up by government delays

That’s all for now. See you next week!

Joshua Neil, Editor
Proventa International

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