Summary: A company named GSK is developing drugs for flu and other viruses. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry is booming and experiencing the largest growth it did in the past few years. New alternatives and medicine for viruses and diseases such as the flu are in development, as GSK partners up with Vir. (a company that is focused on combining immunologic insights with cutting-edge technologies to treat and prevent serious infectious diseases.)
Brief:
GlaxoSmithKline is making a bigger bet on its collaboration with Vir Biotechnology, reaching a deal to expand the companies' work from research on coronavirus therapies to also develop treatments for influenza and other respiratory viruses.
Per terms of the deal, Vir will receive an upfront payment of $225 million from GSK, which will also make an equity investment of $120 million, the companies said Wednesday. Vir shares rose by more than 10% in morning trading.
The deal includes an option for GSK to co-develop VIR-2482, an antibody treatment designed to prevent flu that has already completed a Phase 1 trial. Vir will fund research through Phase 2, at which point GSK can pay an option fee of $300 million and get co-development rights.
Insight:
Expanded collaboration gives GSK alternative ways to build a presence in a field that has been, with the rise of the coronavirus, greatly energized. With their involvement and initiative in creating partnerships, along with their lack of fear in spending money, they have been churning out effective vaccines and antibody drugs in record time.
Though GSK hasn’t worked on developing its own shot, it has instead pledged its immune-boosting adjuvant to other companies. It has expanded research through deals and partnerships and, in addition to Vir, recently broadened partnerships with CureVac to focus on their coronavirus vaccine, along with next-generation candidates with the potential of fighting new emerging variants of the disease. The company has worked with as many as 5 mRNA-based vaccines and monoclonal antibodies for infectious diseases in July last year.
GSK colaborated with Vir last year as well, taking a $250 million stake in the biotechnology and gaining access to technology that identifies drug targets common to viral families. They initially focused on two antibody candidates: VIR-7831 and VIR-7832. They then collaborated with Eli Lilly to test the combination treatment of VIR-7831 with Lilly’s bamlanivimab.
As part of GSK’s initial work, researchers had been working to find targets that could fight the flu and other diseases. The singular goal of this operation is that, eventually, we may develop a single drug that could address multiple bugs.
Even though many Americans get the flu vaccine, many people are still infected yearly and the disease is estimated to be the cause of as many as 810 000 hospitalizations and 61 000 deaths a year since 2010.
Kommentarer