The CEO of Regeneron, a pharmaceutical company developing a coronavirus treatment, said the U.S. has limited capacity to manufacture potential COVID-19 treatments or vaccines.  Leonard Schleifer said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” two aspects of health care infrastructure must be in place for when a vaccine or treatment becomes available: distribution and manufacturing. “Our distribution capabilities…

A Johnson & Johnson executive said Sunday that the company’s goal is to deliver 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccine next year. Paul Stoffels, the company’s chief scientific officer, told ABC’s “This Week” that Johnson & Johnson is increasing its manufacturing and preparing for clinical trials in September. He hopes to have data and start developing…

After Recovery From the Coronavirus, Most People Carry Antibodies A new study offers a glimmer of hope in the grim fight against the coronavirus: Nearly everyone who has had the disease — regardless of age, sex or severity of illness — makes antibodies to the virus. The study, posted online on Tuesday but not yet reviewed…

When the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill, focus – and hope for recovery – was placed on the testing capacity of biotechnology. Despite stepping into his role mere weeks before the emergence of the pandemic, Tom Polen, CEO of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), is one of the biotech industry’s primary leaders…

This pandemic may be caused by a virus, but desperate measures to save patients often include overprescribing antibiotics, which is raising concerns about furthering antibiotic resistance. Why it matters: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) forces clinicians to look for other drugs to treat patients but the antibiotic pipeline is in dire straits. The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing how few options there are…

Pharma startups are in the media spotlight, after decades of playing second-fiddle to consumer and enterprise tech, but are facing their own pandemic-related challenges. What’s happening: Many clinical trials have been put on indefinite hold, particularly if they involved hospital sites. The upshot is that such startups are effectively in a holding pattern, with investors scrambling…

Abbott Laboratories has shipped 1.4 million of its highly touted “rapid” molecular tests for the Coronavirus strain COVID-19 in the last month across the U.S., keeping ahead of its commitments to ramp up production. The ability of Abbott to increase production and distribution of its ID NOW COVID-19 test is significant because it has been hailed in…

The revolutionary genetic technique better known for its potential to cure thousands of inherited diseases could also solve the challenge of Covid-19 diagnostic testing, scientists announced on Tuesday. A team headed by biologist Feng Zhang of the McGovern Institute at MIT and the Broad Institute has repurposed the genome-editing tool CRISPR into a test able to…

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. said an experimental antibody treatment for Covid-19 could be available as soon as this fall, an expedited timeline for a drug that’s scheduled to be studied in humans for the first time in June. To meet the fall time line will “depend on a lot of factors,” including whether the treatment works…