A booster dose of Sanofi’s Dengvaxia tetravalent dengue vaccine “does not elicit a consistent, meaningful booster effect” against all dengue serotypes in people previously exposed to the virus, according to a Phase 2 non-inferiority study published Tuesday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The Sanofi-funded study—conducted in Colombia and the Philippines—tested an additional dose of the live attenuated shot administered one or two years after a two- or three-dose primary series in…
A month after stepping down as president of Takeda’s global vaccine business, Rajeev Venkayya has been named CEO of Aerium Therapeutics, an antibody specialist that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday. The Boston- and Lausanne-based biopharma’s pipeline includes two monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 aimed at “vulnerable populations for which vaccines do not provide adequate protection,” according to a press release.
Leaving Takeda after a decade, Venkayya told Reuters that with…
J&J’s Janssen subsidiary is moving an investigational dengue treatment into clinical development, the company announced Wednesday. New preclinical data published in Nature showed that the compound—an “entirely novel mechanism of antiviral action”—demonstrated efficacy against dengue in a prophylactic setting and “rapid and significant reduction in viral load” in a therapeutic model, according to Janssen’s press release.
The KU Leuven Rega Institute and the KU Leuven Centre for Drug…
Britain’s Emergex Vaccines announced last week that it has received Swiss regulatory approval to launch Phase 1 trials of its T cell dengue vaccine candidate, PepGNP-Dengue.
The company raised $22 million last year to advance its synthetic T cell vaccine portfolio (delivered using a thermostable microneedle patch), including candidates for Covid-19, dengue and pandemic influenza.
Corporate restructuring, clinical trial results, and a new business investment kept Sanofi in the news this week.
First, the company announced Monday that as part of its “ongoing efforts to reduce the complexity of its Consumer Healthcare portfolio and accelerate its growth trajectory,” it will offload 16 products to Germany’s STADA Arzneimittel. Neither firm disclosed deal terms.
The same day, Sanofi announced that its respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) single-dose monoclonal…
Takeda released three-year Phase 3 follow-up results for its tetravalent dengue vaccine last week—reporting 83.6% efficacy in preventing hospitalization and 62% efficacy against the disease overall, per its press release.
The company found no important safety risks and observed no evidence of disease enhancement in dengue-naïve participants, according to the press release. Sanofi’s Dengvaxia was discontinued by the Philippine government in 2017 after the company warned the shot could…
France’s bioMérieux has secured European CE marking for three fully automated immunoassays for dengue, the company announced Wednesday.
Performed on the company’s Vidas family platforms, the Vidas Dengue NS1 Ag, Anti-Dengue IgM and Anti-Dengue IgG are “cost-effective and suitable for low- and middle-income countries,” according to the press release.
The company plans to add a chikungunya assay to its diagnostic offerings, per the announcement.
Takeda has asked the European Medicines Agency to approve its tetravalent dengue vaccine candidate, the company announced last week. In parallel, the agency will consider recommending the shot for countries outside the European Union through the EU-M4all (previously Article 58) procedure, according to the press release.
Takeda said it plans to seek additional approvals for TAK-003 this year in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand…
Covid-19 dominated the 39th J. P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPM), held virtually this week instead of at its customary haunt, San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis. Beyond much coronavirus chatter, the event also featured one major M&A announcement (Sanofi touting its $1 billion Kymab buy) and additional vaccine news from companies including GSK (for RSV), Moderna (for flu, HIV and Nipah) and Takeda (for dengue).
BioNTech CEO Uğur Şahin announced the German company’s plans to…
Bayer launched on Monday its Fludora Co-Max dual-action space spray solution for combating insecticide-resistant Aedes mosquito-borne arboviruses including chikungunya, dengue and Zika.
The spray combines two compounds (transfluthrin and flupyradifurone) and can be diluted with water to “maintain efficacy over greater distances” and reduce environmental impact, the press release said. Fludora Co-Max has been available in Côte d’Ivoire since November; Bayer will introduce it in other…