Jon Bigelow, Thayer Pond Solutions

Fighting COVID-19 – both the pandemic and the recession it provoked – is President Biden’s top priority, and he is asking Congress to pass two huge economic packages. Few dispute that more relief and stimulus is needed. There’s a growing risk, however, that the new fiscal reality facing the federal government resurrects the idea of a pharma marketing tax.

A Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by Sanofi and U.S. group Translate Bio “will not be ready this year,” the French drugmaker’s chief executive told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

The University of Oxford launched a study to assess the safety and immune response of the Covid-19 vaccine the company has developed with AstraZeneca Plc in children for the first time.

Amgen

In a long-running court battle over PCSK9 antibodies, Amgen lost the company’s bid to uphold patent claims for the cholesterol drug Repatha against rival drug Praluent, developed by Sanofi and Regeneron.

GSK

Sandoz, a division of Swiss-based Novartis, inked a deal to buy U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline’s cephalosporin antibiotics business.

Texas-based Molecular Templates (MTEM) and Bristol Myers Squibb forged a strategic research collaboration worth a potential $1.3 billion to discover and develop multiple oncology therapies using a next-generation engineered toxin body platform.

The U.S. government exercised an option for an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, bringing the total number of doses to be supplied by the companies to the United States to 300 million.

Bristol Myers Squibb reported that the company was abandoning the BCMA CAR-T therapy orva-cel and taking a $470 million write-off.

Amanda Powers-Han, Greater Than One

Amanda Powers-Han, Senior Partner and Chief Marketing Officer for Greater Than One, explores some real-life technology applications that are transforming healthcare today and tomorrow.

Switzerland-based AC Immune SA announced positive interim results from the company’s ongoing Phase Ib/IIa clinical trial of ACI-35.030 for Alzheimer’s disease.