Jeff Winton Associates, a full-service communications agency for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other life sciences industries, announced expansion into additional global markets through a new partnership with UK-based marketing communications firm Onyx Health.

AstraZeneca Plc has begun enrolling adults for a U.S.-funded, 30,000-subject late-stage study of the company’s high-profile Covid-19 vaccine candidate.

Japan is making an aggressive move to grab enough coronavirus vaccine to inoculate the country’s population four times over, a push the government hopes will instill confidence that it can host a delayed Summer Olympics in 2021.

Takeda Pharmaceutical will divest Takeda Consumer Healthcare Company Limited (TCHC) to The Blackstone Group for $2.3 billion as the company continues to divest non-core business units in order to pare down debt accumulated from its $62 billion acquisition of Shire Plc.

Roche

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Roche’s Enspryng for the central nervous system disorder neuromyelitis optica, putting the Swiss drugmaker head-to-head with Alexion’s Soliris in a costly treatment area.

The United States entered an agreement with drugmaker Moderna Inc. to acquire 100 million doses of the company’s potential COVID-19 vaccine for around $1.5 billion, the company and White House said.

The United States awarded a $265 million contract to a Texas facility of Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings Corp to step up production of a coronavirus vaccine candidate, President Donald Trump said.

Johnson & Johnson is in talks with the government of Japan and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation about locking up allocations of a potential COVID-19 vaccine in advance of the company producing any of the medicines, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Joseph Wolk told Reuters in an interview.

A clinical trial of Fujifilm Holdings’ Avigan drug yielded inconclusive results as a treatment of COVID-19, Japanese researchers said on Friday.

Shares of Fujifilm Holdings Corp. fell after Kyodo news reported that so far there has been no clear evidence of efficacy for the company’s drug Avigan in treating the novel coronavirus in some clinical trials.