A collaboration between Gilead Sciences and Dragonfly Therapeutics was announced May 2, with an end goal of bringing Dragonfly’s DF7001 natural killer (NK) engager program designed for patients with cancer or inflammatory diseases to fruition.
Gilead Sciences Inc. announced that first-quarter 2022 revenue rose 3 percent, helped by sales of the HIV drug Biktarvy and the COVID antiviral Veklury, but reported a net loss as the biotech company wrote down the value of its 2020 acquisition of Immunomedics following recent trial results for the cancer medicine Trodelvy.
ReutersU.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is aiming to expand access to COVID-19 oral antiviral treatments like Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid by doubling the number of locations at which they are available, the White House said on April 26.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead Sciences’ antiviral therapy Veklury (remdesivir) as the first treatment for COVID-19 in young children.
An experimental drug being developed by RedHill Biopharma Ltd. that improved outcomes in a randomized trial involving severely ill COVID-19 patients infected with earlier versions of the coronavirus is showing promise against the Omicron variant in test tube experiments, researchers said. Additionally, people living with well-controlled HIV infections are likely to have immune responses to the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and from Pfizer/BioNTech similar to those of otherwise healthy individuals, according to new data.
The U.S. health regulator said on March 25 the current authorized dose of GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology’s COVID-19 antibody therapy is unlikely to be effective against the Omicron BA.2 variant.
ReutersGilead Sciences Inc.’s antiviral drug remdesivir showed antiviral activity against Omicron, Delta and other variants of the coronavirus in laboratory studies, the company said on February 11.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has hit companies unevenly, some biopharma firms that have produced new drugs or vaccines against the disease have shown big spikes in drug sales. BioSpace reviewed five companies that produced non-vaccine treatments for COVID-19.
Merck & Co. and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics announced they have supplied about 3.1 million courses of their antiviral drug against COVID-19, molnupiravir, to the U.S. government. In other news, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that vaccination against COVID-19 not only protects pregnant women against the disease but their babies as well.
Gilead Sciences Inc.’s COVID-19 drug remdesivir during 2021 overtook AbbVie Inc.’s 20-year-old arthritis drug Humira as the medicine that U.S. hospitals spent the most on, according to Vizient Inc., a purchasing group used by about half the nation’s hospitals.
