Tesla, the electric car company founded and run by Elon Musk, is building mobile molecular printers to assist Germany’s CureVac in manufacturing an experimental COVID-19 vaccine.
Amidst the pandemic, the biopharma industry continues to surge ahead as BioSpace reviews companies that have made recent job announcement expansions.
Inovio Pharmaceuticals was one of the earlier companies to identify a potential vaccine candidate against COVID-19, but has run into manufacturing problems that have stymied its development plans.
Vancouver, British Columbia-based AbCellera closed a Series B financing worth $105 million, led by OrbiMed and DCVC Bio.
Contract drug manufacturer Lonza still expects to supply drugmaker Moderna with active ingredients for the company’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine by June or July to support laboratory trials, the Swiss company’s interim CEO, Albert Baehny, told CNBC.
Shares of Orchard Therapeutics fell in trading after the company announced a new strategic plan that includes the shift in clinical focus, the shuttering of a proposed manufacturing facility in California and the termination of 25 percent of company staff.
Gilead Sciences issued a statement describing the company’s efforts of scaling up manufacturing and distribution of the antiviral drug remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19.
Moderna Inc. and Swiss contract drugmaker Lonza Group AG said on Friday they would accelerate the manufacturing of the U.S. drug developer’s potential coronavirus vaccine.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe, biopharma companies big and small geared up to test experimental drugs and vaccines or to potentially repurpose approved drugs to fight the disease. Many scaled up manufacturing capabilities for pharmaceutical ingredients, existing compounds, and launched clinical trials. Now companies are asking help paying for it and warn that if governments want these therapies to be rolled out quickly and fairly, it’s going to require significant coordination and upfront funding.
In the company’s daily blog about the precautions being taken to ensure continued service to the world, Amazon intends to build testing facilities for employees.