The biopharma industry continues impressive work to find treatments and vaccines—and many are partnering with agencies like NIH and BARDA, and even one another.
The clinical trial of Moderna’s vaccine is underway in Seattle, Washington—"a rapid turnaround time after researchers learned the virus’s genetic sequence in January,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
ICYMI: Moderna, which is researching treatments and vaccines for cancer, heart disease, and infectious diseases based on messenger RNA, partnered with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI) and NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to develop a vaccine.
And everyone’s watching Gilead’s remdesivir, the antiviral developed to treat Ebola but is now in trials in the United States and Asia to see if it’s effective against the coronavirus.
It looks like it has real potential,explains Biopharma Dive, because of “preclinical data showing the drug to be active against the MERS and SARS viruses, which share enough genetic similarities to SARS-COV-2 that researchers and the company think remdesivir could work against it too.”
Meanwhile, two additional BIO members, Vir Biotechnology and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, announced they’ll work together even more closely to expand their existing collaboration “to include the development and commercialization of RNAi therapeutics targeting” the coronavirus, according to a press release.
How it will work: Alnylam has designed and synthesized 350 siRNAs (small interfering RNA) targeting the coronavirus genomes, which they’ll screen for effectiveness, while Vir will lead the development and commercialization of any selected for further development.
What they’re saying: "There is an imperative to do whatever we can to try and head that off and mitigate the pandemic to the extent that we can," said Dr. George Scangos, CEO of Vir Biotechnology. "It's important for all constituents—governments, NGOs, companies—to put aside their parochial interests and work together to see if we can do something that will save a lot of lives around the world."