Johnson & Johnson said Monday human testing of its experimental vaccine for the coronavirus will begin by September and it could be available for emergency use authorization in early 2021. J&J also said it has committed more than $1 billion of investment in partnership with the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is part…

The drugs have been championed by President Donald Trump for treatment despite scant evidence. The Food and Drug Administration on Sunday issued an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, decades-old malaria drugs championed by President Donald Trump for coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The agency allowed for the drugs to be “donated to the…

Private research and innovation offer promising new leads. (WSJ Editorial Board | March 29, 2020) Governments are frantically trying to contain and combat the coronavirus, and those efforts are important, but the world’s best hope is private innovation. Cutting-edge diagnostic tests and treatments are advancing, and government should encourage the trend. President Trump recently ordered…

The US Food and Drug Administration granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to a COVID-19 test that delivers positive results in five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes.  Abbott Laboratories claims its ID NOW COVID-19 test could dramatically change the battle against the novel coronavirus in the US. The test runs on Abbott’s ID NOW platform, which…

A who’s who of leading biopharma companies have joined forces to strengthen the drug industry’s response against the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies including Novartis and Pfizer are contributing to the joint response through actions including the sharing of proprietary compound libraries. With the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus spreading quickly around the world, some of the companies best equipped to help…

Everyone’s heard plenty about chloroquine, azithromycin, remdesivir and other front-running ideas for anti-coronovirus therapies. Today I wanted to focus on some compounds that haven’t gotten as much attention but which have been proposed from more than one place as possibilities. Some of these have shown up in the comments to past posts here, for example.…

PARIS (Reuters) – French healthcare company Sanofi Pasteur and U.S. company Translate Bio announced on Friday plans to collaborate on developing a vaccine to treat the coronavirus, which has killed thousands around the world.  The companies said Translate Bio would work on discovering, designing, and manufacturing a number of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates, while Sanofi would…

Soon after the impact of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 became apparent, academic researchers, public health institutions and private companies began the search for a vaccine to prevent infection and treatment to manage it. New trials are announced daily, and data sharing has been unprecedented. As part of efforts to encourage data sharing and…

The CEO of a global pharmaceutical company’s operations in Italy has advice for anyone expecting a Covid-19 solution anytime soon: Drugs and vaccinestake time to create — and to be sure they work safely. “Drug development is a long, long, long process,” Massimo Scaccabarozzi, CEO of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit based in Milan, said Thursday on a…