Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.
We have more data on the J&J/Janssen coronavirus vaccine, which those keeping score at home will remember is an adenovirus vector candidate. It uses an obscure member of that virus family (Ad26) that very few people have ever been exposed to, as opposed to the ones where significant parts of the population might have pre-existing… Read More
We now have the official clinical trial designs for the three biggest and most advanced coronavirus vaccine trials: Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca. Now, as for you, J&J, Novavax, Merck, and all the others that are pushing into efficacy trials as fast as possible – don’t think for a moment that you won’t be exp… Read More
We have a bit of human clinical data from the Eli Lilly/Abcellera collaboration to make a monoclonal antibody therapy against the coronavirus. A full paper is coming soon, the press release says, but for now it looks like this is all we have to go on. It’s a mixed assortment of news. On the cheerful… Read More
Lots of uncertainty in the vaccine world today: as many will have heard, the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial in the UK, the US, and Brazil has been paused due to a serious adverse event. The New York Times, citing a source with knowledge of the event, reported last night that this was transverse myelitis. And Nature has… Read More
When we last heard from the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine program, they had picked a different candidate than the one that they had already published on (BNT162b1). Today they’ve released more data about the actual candidate, BNT162b2. And it seems pretty clear why they went with it. This preprint describes a head-to-head study (NCT04368728) betwe… Read More
Let’s have a look at the case of Unity Biotechnology, because this is a story that won’t get so many headlines. Unity has been investigating a really interesting but high-risk idea. It’s in the anti-aging field, so those two adjectives sort of apply by definition, and it’s the hypothesis that one of the problems is… Read More
So now we have some clinical data on yet another category of vaccine: SinoPharm’s inactivated coronavirus candidate. This is one of the classic vaccine techniques, where an infectious virus is altered by some sort of protein-denaturing treatment (heating or reactive chemistry) to make it noninfectious. But such particles can retain enough of… Read More
Many will have heard Russia’s announcement that they have approved a coronavirus vaccine. I’ve already had several people ask me what I think of it, so let me be clear: I think it’s a ridiculous publicity stunt. If it’s supposed to make Russia look like some sort of biotechnology powerhouse, then as far as I’m… Read More
Several days after making some headlines with a press release about the data, the Novavax vaccine effort has published on Medrxiv. The is the first look at human data we have at an approach using recombinant coronavirus proteins (plus an adjuvant, in this case a proprietary saponin natural product). The protein itself is produced in… Read More
We have a sudden influx over the last few days of preclinical rhesus challenge studies with various coronavirus vaccines, and it’s only natural to try to compare them. I have worked up a table with all four of the current results and the previously reported SinoVac inactivated virus vaccine, whose rhesus challenge numbers were officially… Read More
