Deals, Development and Manufacturing

Merck will acquire Themis Bioscience and collaborate with IAVI and Ridgeback Bio on COVID-19 vaccines and therapies.

Merck will use Themis’s vector platform to develop a vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

CordenPharma and Moderna extended a strategic manufacturing services agreement for the supply of lipid excipients to be used in Moderna’s vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.

The companies have entered into a partnership worth more than $231 million to provide GSK with added capacity to manufacture and supply its biopharmaceutical therapies.

Funding from the US government could lead to 300 million coronavirus vaccine doses by October 2020.

CanSinoBIO will license-in Precision NanoSystems' proprietary RNA vaccine platform technology while the latter leads the development of the RNA vaccine formulation.

The companies have formed a collaboration to develop a novel human recombinant protein as a therapeutic candidate against COVID-19.

Ori Biotech is partnering with manufacturers and materials suppliers to develop an automated system for cell and gene therapy manufacturing.

The Center for iPS Cell Research and Application Foundation and the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult have announced the launch of a new collaborative research project that will focus on induced pluripotent stem cell characterization.

Santen Pharmaceutical has concluded a licensing agreement with jCyte for the development, registration, and commercialization rights to jCell, an investigational retinitis pigmentosa therapy, in Japan, Asia, and Europe.

Hitachi Chemical Advanced Therapeutics Solutions and apceth Biopharma entered into long-term development and manufacturing services agreements for the clinical and commercial supply of multiple bluebird bio therapies.

Through the agreement, Mylan will manufacture and distribute remdesivir in 127 low- and middle-income countries, including India.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations will invest up to $384 million of additional funding, in addition to the $4 million it invested in March, to advance the clinical development of NVX-CoV2373, Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Boehringer Ingelheim will use the partnership to reveal novel insights into the complexities of various inflammatory diseases, which opens the potential for a clearer understanding of potential candidate biomarkers.

AbbVie and Allergan have satisfied all required antitrust clearances for the acquisition.

The collaboration will add diversity to Alexion’s commercial portfolio and will give the company access to Portola’s commercialized medicine, Andexxa (coagulation factor Xa [recombinant], inactivated-zhzo).

The companies have entered into a manufacturing agreement to supply leronlimab, an investigational new drug currently being used in clinical trial protocols for COVID-19.

Kindeva Drug Delivery plans capital investment and jobs growth.

The goal of the collaboration is to manufacture up to one billion does per year of mRNA-1273, Moderna’s vaccine against the novel coronavirus.

Sartorius adds chromatography systems and resins, tangential flow filtration, and biomolecular characterization technologies.

Catalent and Johnson & Johnson announce joint investment and tech transfer to prepare for rapid scale-up and segregated cGMP commercial manufacturing capacity.

AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have announced that they will collaborate on the global development and distribution of the university’s potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine aimed at preventing COVID-19 infection.

ILC Therapeutics, a biotech company based in the United Kingdom, has discovered two separate novel treatments for patients suffering with COVID-19 prior to needing ventilators.

Solentim and ATUM will bundle together the Leap-In Transposase platform with the VIPS single cell cloning instrument for cell line development.

Merck will provide funding and will work with researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology to identify targets for therapeutic intervention and vaccine development.

A report into the Swiss biotech sector has shown that there is continued growth in the sector, which has received investments from public and private companies worth CHF 1.2 billion (US$1.2 billion).

MicrofluidX has raised £1.4 million (US$1.7 million) in seed funding, which it will use to develop its novel cell bioprocessing technology for cell and gene therapy.

The vaccine will be based on a ReiThera-proprietary simian adenoviral vector with strong immunological potency and low pre-existing immunity in humans.

Emergent will offer up its drug substance manufacturing services with support by investments from Johnson & Johnson starting in 2020.

Bayer will provide CAD $1.5 million (USD$1 million) toward two studies to evaluate its chloroquine and interferon beta-1b combination therapies.