Novartis dropped out of the company’s deal to fund Mesoblast’s floundering COVID-19 treatment.
Hundreds of updates were provided on clinical trials and preclinical research at the 63rd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine has been less effective in South Africa at keeping people infected with the virus out of hospital since the Omicron variant emerged in November, a real-world study published on December 14 showed.
German researchers found that COVID-19 therapies developed by Eli Lilly and Regeneron lose most of their effectiveness when exposed in laboratory tests to the Omicron variant of coronavirus, likely reducing treatment options if the new variant prevails.
Samsung Biologics Co. Ltd. said on December 13 the company would continue its partnership with AstraZeneca Plc on manufacturing biopharmaceuticals.
Merck & Co. said on December 13 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration placed clinical holds on trials testing the company’s HIV drug islatravir.
Novartis is going full steam ahead with the company’s cancer development efforts, posting positive results from two ongoing trials for lymphoma and leukemia.
Data continue to suggest that although the Omicron variant is more infectious and more likely to evade immunity than the Delta variant, it appears to be associated with less severe illness. Meanwhile, researchers are puzzled about the origins of Omicron.
The Omicron coronavirus variant – reported in more than 60 countries – poses a “very high” global risk, with some evidence that it evades vaccine protection but clinical data on its severity is limited, the World Health Organization says.
Loxo Oncology, part of Eli Lilly, partnered with Foghorn Therapeutics in a deal that enables the former to use the latter’s Gene Traffic Control platform to advance its pipeline of oncology medicines.
