Tag Archive for: Pfizer

British drugmaker GSK on Friday said it raised 885.6 million pounds ($1.08 billion) from a discounted stake sale in Haleon, cutting its shareholding to 7.4% in the world’s largest standalone consumer healthcare firm.

Pfizer, BioNTech, and biotech firm Promosome told a federal judge in San Diego, California that they have agreed to end Promosome’s lawsuit accusing the COVID-19 vaccine makers of infringing a patent related to messenger RNA technology.

Around 4 million Americans received the updated COVID-19 shots in September, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), even as some people have found it difficult to book vaccination appointments or find the vaccines at no cost.

Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and U.S. colleague Drew Weissman, who met in line for a photocopier before making mRNA molecule discoveries that paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines, won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday.

Pfizer had said in August it will launch a cost-cutting program if its COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatment keep underperforming expectations in the coming months due to plunging demand.

The agency did not choose to target the shots at specific high-risk populations as some experts have suggested, and other countries have recommended. The shots are part of a push by public health officials to align the next COVID vaccines more closely with the actual circulating variant of the virus, much as annual flu shots are designed.

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel is due on Tuesday to recommend whether the updated COVID-19 shots formulated by vaccine manufacturers should be given broadly or just to specific populations at higher risk during this fall’s vaccination campaign.

Pfizer and Moderna said their updated vaccines, which target the XBB.1.5 subvariant of the virus, were expected to be available for most people in the United States in the coming days. The FDA approved those shots for people ages 12 and above, and authorized them for emergency use in children ages 6 months through 11 years.

Pfizer and French pharmaceutical peer Valneva announced on Thursday that a phase 2 study for its VLA15 Lyme disease vaccine candidate showed a “strong immune response” in both children and adolescents a month after a booster shoot.

The UK drug regulator said on Tuesday it has approved an updated COVID-19 vaccine by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech that targets only the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant.