Look back at pharma news in the week to April 10, 2020

As to be expected, the novel coronavirus continued to dominate the news last week, including Gilead Sciences’ decision to ramp up production and research of its COVID-19 candidate remdesivir, as well as gifting 1.5 million doses. Also, global plasma leaders, including Takeda and CSL Behring, are collaborating on a possible hyperimmune therapy for COVID-19. Additionally, GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology announced that their collaboration would prioritize coronavirus drugs, notably VIR-7831 and VIR-7832. Elsewhere, Millendo Therapeutics suffered a blow on Monday, when its rare disease drug livoletide failed to meet Phase IIb goals and leading to the company terminating the PWS program.

Remdesivir updates offer encouragement about manufacturing scale up

Gilead Sciences once again took advantage of a weekend lull in the torrent of news about COVID-19 to provide the public and their investors with a comprehensive update about the progress of remdesivir for the treatment of COVID, commented SVB Leerink Research analyst Geoffrey Porges. Gilead’s update concerned clinical and manufacturing considerations, and amounted to the most complete disclosure investors have ever had about any drug development program, much less one proceeding on such an accelerated and impactful basis. Gilead’s board, management and their legal advisors are to be applauded for maintaining such transparency in their disclosure to all the many constituencies with huge vested interests in the outlook for this medicine, he said.