| | | |   | Hello, everyone. Damian here with a look at snortable vaccines, news on a certain pharmaceutical entrepreneur, and questions about Moderna's executive turnover. | | | Crafting an inhalable Covid vaccine is easier said than done  The miraculously rapid development of injectable vaccines for Covid-19 has saved lives around the world, but the dream of preventing spread and infection would require vaccines that do their work where the virus takes hold: in the mucus membranes of the nose, mouth, and throat.
That means intranasal vaccines, which, as a new STAT video makes clear, are more than a little tricky to create. Research groups are developing such vaccines by using live but weakened viruses to teach the immune system to recognize SARS-CoV-2 at the site of infection.
That means searching for a Goldilocks dosage that is potent enough to trigger an immune reaction but not so powerful that people get sick simply by getting vaccinated. Getting it exactly right is a formidable challenge, one that scientists hope can be surmounted for Covid-19 and other respiratory infections.
Watch the video. | Martin Shkreli is out of prison Disgraced biotech entrepreneur Martin Shkreli got an early release from federal prison yesterday, concluding a five-year bid for securities fraud.
As STAT’s Ed Silverman reports, Shkreli cut short his seven-year sentence by completing programs that got him an early release. He was transferred to a halfway house, according to a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, and he’ll remain in federal custody until Sept. 14.
It’s unclear what form Shkreli’s second act will take, but, legally, it can’t be in the drug industry. Earlier this year, a federal judge banned him from ever working in pharmaceuticals, and an earlier ruling barred him from ever serving as an officer or director of a publicly traded company.
Read more. | Biotech investors: How to find value in a bear market How are top investors navigating the longest biotech bear market in almost 20 years? RBC Capital Markets Healthcare Desk Sector Strategist Chris McCarthy discusses with Ben Snedeker, Senior Therapeutics Analyst at HealthCor Management and Otello Stampacchia, Ph.D., Founder and Managing Director of Omega Funds. Learn how focusing on market fundamentals and clinical trial pipelines can unlock opportunities to invest in therapeutics companies with potential for long-term growth. Get the insights. | AbbVie dramatically increased its lobbying budget Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque AbbVie, maker of the world’s top-selling medicine, spent more on lobbying in the first quarter than any other drugmaker.
As STAT’s Nicholas Florko and Rachel Cohrs report, AbbVie reported spending $4 million in the first three months of 2022, which is $1 million more than it has ever spent in a single quarter and makes the company the seventh-highest corporate lobbying spender for the period.
AbbVie’s increased budget comes as seven drugmakers prepare to launch cheaper versions of Humira, the superlatively successful anti-inflammatory treatment that accounts for nearly 40% of AbbVie’s annual sales.
Read more. | Does Moderna’s CFO debacle point to deeper problems? The two-day tenure of Moderna’s latest chief financial officer doesn’t exactly speak well of the company’s governance. And when you factor in its recent decision to fire a chief commercial officer one year into her tenure, and the fact that Moderna is on its third CFO since 2020, it’s reasonable to ask whether the company has a managerial problem.
The Financial Times did, and Moderna Chairman Noubar Afeyan had an answer: No. “Both the process of recruiting and vetting, and the process with which we reacted to the new facts that came out, were completely appropriate,” Afeyan said in an interview with FT. “I can’t think of a different approach that we could have used under those circumstances.”
Afeyan’s remarks follow an earlier FT story in which corporate governance experts made quite the opposite point, arguing that Moderna’s recent spate of executive departures suggests there are structural weaknesses behind the company’s multibillion-dollar pandemic success. | More reads - Drugmakers win court battle over an HHS rule that would have penalized them for offering copay coupons. STAT+
- As Covid cases rise, U.S. health officials mull widening additional booster eligibility. Reuters
- U.K. biotech launches with backing from pharma giant AstraZeneca. Bloomberg
- Applied Molecular Transport’s co-founder exits along with 40% of staff as early pipeline activity paused. FierceBiotech
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
No comments