News Archive

GAITHERSBURG, Md., July 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) today announced a five-year manufacturing services agreement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, for large-scale drug substance manufacturing for Johnson & Johnson’s investigational SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Ad26.COV2-S, recombinant based on the AdVac® technology. Emergent will provide contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) services to produce drug substance at large scale over five years, valued at approximately $480 million for the first two years.

At BioBuzz, we’ve been chronicling the BioHealth Capital Region’s contributions to the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve covered BHCR companies developing vaccine candidates and creating diagnostic and serological COVID-19; we’ve also written about companies across the region that have delivered essential materials for the fight against COVID-19 and pivoted their business models to help the region navigate this public health crises.  

Image: https://biobuzz.io

The UMB-born startup was co-founded by cardiac surgery chief Dr. James Gammie, who was previously involved with another company that was acquired in 2017 for up to $250 million.

Inner Harbor-based biotech company PathSensors will be acquired by global security screening and threat detection company Smiths Detection, the companies announced this week.

With the deal, PathSensors will become part of a London-based company with 2,200 employees and a U.S. headquarters in Edgewood.

Image: PathSensors is headquartered at Columbus Center. (Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Smash the Iron Cage, used under Creative Commons license)

Gentian Diagnostics AS is pleased to announce that the Research Council of Norway (Norges Forskningsråd) has awarded Gentian up to NOK 8.0 million of funding to support the development of a high-throughput COVID-19 antibody test. Gentian has in cooperation with Professor Ørjan Olsvik and Dr. Vegard Skogen at the University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway performed explorative test work that supports an idea of developing a COVID-19 antibody test based on Gentian’s proprietary technology. The assay, if successfully developed, will be designed for use on clinical analysers already available in major laboratories around the world.

Welcome to GEN’s COVID-19 DRUG & VACCINE CANDIDATE TRACKER website.

Total Drug & Vaccine Candidates: 237 (as of June 8)

The goal of this resource is to provide a comprehensive collection of news, milestones, and updates on drug and vaccine candidates currently being developed for the COVID-19 pandemic.

This resource is based on the reporting of GEN senior news editor Alex Philippidis, who began compiling information on drug and vaccine candidates in the early weeks of the pandemic. The numbers of verified candidates ballooned rapidly from 35 in February 2020, to 60 in March, to 160 in April.

September 12, 2020

Special Guests Including:

Dr. Michele McMurry-Hearth

President and CEO, 

Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO)

GAITHERSBURG, Md., June 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Altimmune, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALT), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, today announced it was awarded $4.7 million from the U.S. Army Medical Research & Development Command (USAMRDC) to fund its Phase 1/2 clinical trial of T-COVID, an investigational intranasal immune modulator for the treatment of outpatients with early COVID-19. The competitive award was granted by USAMRDC in collaboration with the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC), a 501(c)(3) biomedical technology consortium working in partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD). The award is expected to provide Altimmune sufficient funding to cover the entire cost of conducting this clinical trial.

Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE:EBS) has closed a five-year agreement with Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) unit Janssen Pharmaceuticals for large-scale drug substance manufacturing for J&J’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Ad26.COV2-S.

EBS will provide contract development and manufacturing services over the contract term valued at ~$480M for the first two years. Volume manufacturing will start in 2021 at its Baltimore Bayview facility subsequent to technology transfer.

The company will release updated 2020 guidance when it reports Q2 results.

JNJ is up 2% premarket and EBS up 1%, both on light volume.