June 5, 2020 - Fierce Pharma
Novavax wasn’t included in the U.S. government’s group of COVID-19 vaccine finalists for Operation Warp Speed, but only days after news of those picks broke, the company has picked up a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.
The DoD
awarded
Novavax $60 million to help produce components of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, dubbed NVX‑CoV2373, in the U.S. Under the contract, Novavax will deliver 10 million doses of the vaccine to the DoD this year. Those doses could be used in mid- and late-stage testing or under an emergency use authorization from the FDA.
June 5, 2020 - Fierce Biotech
After culling a $2.6 billion biobucks pact last year, Bristol Myers Squibb is making a second and final cut to its pact with four-year immuno-oncology biotech Jounce Therapeutics.
Last summer, Celgene (now Bristol) restructured its alliance with Jounce, dropping the broad $2.6 billion pact it formed in 2016 while securing full rights to a single asset. The changes cut Celgene’s ties to ICOS and PD-1 programs that overlapped with those in Bristol’s pipeline and portfolio as it prepared to be subsumed into its parent company.
This old deal was, however, replaced by an agreement covering that new single asset, JTX-8064, a Jounce antibody that targets the LILRB2 receptor found on macrophages.
June 4, 2020 - Fierce Pharma
British drugmaker AstraZeneca has made clear its intent to rapidly scale production of Oxford University's COVID-19 vaccine hopeful despite a dearth of clinical data to support its use. Now, with an eye-popping deal worth three-quarters of a billion dollars, AstraZeneca is putting its money where its mouth is.
The British pharma has
inked
a $750 million deal with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance to manufacture and distribute 300 million doses of Oxford's adenovirus-based COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2020, the drugmaker said Thursday.
AZ also agreed to a licensing deal with the Serum Institute of India to provide 1 billion doses of the vaccine to low- and middle-income countries, with the goal of 400 million produced by year's end.
June 4, 2020 - Fierce Biotech
Since it launched in 2018, Accent Therapeutics has busied itself discovering new targets for cancer drugs in the space of RNA-modifying proteins (RMPs). But the time for lying low is over—just weeks after the biotech raised a $63 million round, it’s striking its first Big Pharma partnership with AstraZeneca.
Accent is netting $55 million upfront in a discovery, development and commercialization deal, but it stands to pick up as much as $1.1 billion in option fees and milestone payments. Under the deal, the biotech will handle R&D work for a nominated preclinical program through the end of phase 1, at which point AstraZeneca will take over clinical development and commercialization activities. The Big Pharma also has the option to license two more programs, for which Accent will do some preclinical work.
