The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.21252315v1
Reanalysis of the Pfizer mRNA BNT162b2 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine data fails to find any increased efficacy following the boost
A Phase II trial reported that xevinapant plus chemoradiotherapy reduced risk of death by 51% vs standard of care in this patient population; Phase III TrilynX study initiated in September 2020
Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany gains exclusive global development and commercialization rights; Debiopharm to receive €188 million upfront and up to €710 million in milestone, as well as royalty payments
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/debiopharm-grants-a-worldwide-exclusive-license-to-merck-kgaa-darmstadt-germany-for-the-development-and-commercialization-of-xevinapant-301237138.html
Merck just paid $1.85 billion for Pandion Therapeutics. 132% Premium
https://pandiontx.com/pipeline/overview/
Cliff Holloway, Chief Executive Officer of Scancell said: “We are pleased to report a period of strong operational and financial progress for Scancell, having transformed the Group’s cash balance through two transactions with the support of our shareholders. 2021 is set to be an exciting year for the business. We continue to work towards developing an effective and differentiated vaccine against COVID-19, potentially active against new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, whilst also making progress with our Moditope®, ImmunoBody® and AvidiMab™ platforms. We would like to thank our shareholders for their continued support over the past 6 months and look forward to utilising the proceeds raised to propel the business forward.”
https://www.labmate-online.com/news/news-and-views/5/scancell/support-spurs-candidates-towards-clinical-development/54447
“DNA can survive for generations,” Mishra says, but RNA is much more transient.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-why-vaccines-cold-freeze-pfizer-moderna
SCANCELL Retweeted
HumanVaccinesProject
@HumanVacProject
More virulent and deadly coronaviruses than #COVID19 are waiting in the wings. The world needs a universal coronavirus vaccine, write HVP CEO
@waynekoff1
and
@GaviSeth
, CEO of
@gavi
, in their
@ScienceMagazine
editorial:
https://twitter.com/anjahuja/status/1362702177639297024?s=20
Fab if Scancell can bag a deal like that..
GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) and CureVac N.V. (Nasdaq: CVAC) announced a new €150m collaboration
Emma Walmsley, Chief Executive Officer, GSK, said: “We believe that next generation vaccines will be crucial in the continued fight against COVID-19.
https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/media/press-releases/gsk-and-curevac-to-develop-next-generation-mrna-covid-19-vaccines/
The University of Glasgow and Eli Lilly and Company have entered into a research collaboration, across four diseases, worth £4.6 million.
“We look forward to collaborating closely with the scientific team at Glasgow to discover potential new therapies for immunological disorders.”
http://www.pharmafile.com/news/570887/university-glasgow-and-lilly-sign-46m-immunological-disease-partnership
Are we guessing that this refers to Scib 1 , covid or something else?
"Exciting developments expected soon. So proud."
Continuum Life Sciences
@ContinuumLS
·
36m
Congratulations to Professor Lindy Durrant&her Scancell team. Professor Durrant is part of our dedicated&valued Nottingham University team researching our unique long term cancer survivors. Exciting developments expected soon.
So proud.
Continuum Life Sciences
@ContinuumLS
Continuum Long Term Survivor Study - Freephone 0800 1 44 84 88 Join Us In The Fight Against Cancer
https://twitter.com/ContinuumLS/status/1360878484667719680?s=20
https://www.scancell.co.uk/continued-progress-on-scib1-%E2%80%93-eight-patients-reach-5-year-survival-milestone
That sounds encouraging Hasiba;
"Exciting developments expected soon. So proud."
Continuum Life Sciences
@ContinuumLS
·
36m
Congratulations to Professor Lindy Durrant&her Scancell team. Professor Durrant is part of our dedicated&valued Nottingham University team researching our unique long term cancer survivors. Exciting developments expected soon.
So proud.
https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterKolchinsky/status/1354929045889286144
Thanks Bermuda.
One of the plans with the highest yield is in the UK because it started earlier. (Oxford Biomedica)
By March, the UK will have vaccinated maybe 28 or 30 million people. The Prime Minister has a goal to vaccinate 15 million people by mid-February, and they're already at 6,5 million. So they will get there".
And it may be like flu, we´ll have to produce a new vaccine every couple of years or something".
This webinar will take place on Thursday 28 January from 14:00 to 15:00 GMT and is free for all.
Professor Lindy Durrant and Dr Michele Mishto will discuss common post-translational modifications to peptides that can be recognised by T cells in cancer, and the potential benefits of using unconventional T cell epitopes in cancer immunotherapy.
https://www.immunology.org/events/joint-bsi-ncri-webinar-what-do-cancer-t-cells-see
But doubling dose of mRNA would be painful. mRNA vaccines are already more uncomfortable than any other vaccines out there (Shingrix) b/c of how strongly they stimulate immune system. Giving 2x the dose might be too much for some people. Other vaccines more easily combined.
For example, flu vaccines are made of proteins, not mRNA. You can easily vaccinate against two or more SARS2 variants using protein vaccine. Trouble is they take a bit longer to modify in response to emergence of a new variant. I would estimate 3-4 months. 15/17
So if new variant emerged that could get around existing vaccines, I think mRNA would be a literally painful but fast solution & comfortable protein vaccines would come to rescue, albeit painfully slowly. But this “what if” is just excuse to get gratuitously nerdy w/ you about...
...vaccine tech b/c I don’t really think SARS2 will mutate to point of needing a new vaccine. More likely, next time we see a coronavirus that requires a new vaccine, it’s going to be SARS3. 17/17
Peter Kolchinsky
@PeterKolchinsky
·
9h
Replying to
@PeterKolchinsky
...new variant will infect more people. Once a person is infected... new variant is not more lethal (though like original strain, it’s bad enough). While not more lethal at level of individual person once they are infected, it’s more lethal at societal level b/c more infectious.
Lethality aside for a moment, not enough attention has been given to what this virus does short of killing. For example, it can rob you of sense of smell, which means taste, for weeks or months. Sound mild until you experience it- it’s a pretty miserable condition. 3/17
Worse, when neurons rewire, they can rewire incorrectly, making delicious food smell putrid (brain telling you it thinks it’s toxic so you won’t poison yourself). Imagine spending months eating food your brain is making you think is rotten. It’s torture.
Current vaccines and those coming down the pike show immune system all or most of viral spike protein, which means that we develop antibodies that can target many nooks and crannies of the protein to shut down the virus. Virus has to change a lot of itself to evade them all.
·
There is a type of drug therapy that the variant could potentially be resistant to, which is a monoclonal antibody. What monoclonal means is really “a single antibody”. And if a company develops a monoclonal antibody that recognizes the bad guy’s nose rings, then...
...changing that one feature could cause a viral variant to evade that one therapy. It’s the virus equivalent of bacteria becoming resistant to one antibiotic. That’s why we sometimes use antibiotics in combination and why companies have been developing monoclonal ****tails. 9/17
Well, more than one “monoclonal” isn’t really “monoclonal”. It’s “polyclonal”, which is actually how our immune system works. It generates many individual antibodies. So when companies makes specific antibodies & combine them, they are approximating natural immunity.
But while companies combine couple of monoclonal antibodies, vaccines train the immune system to generate dozens, even hundreds, of effective ones, truly a polyclonal ****tail. So virus would need to mutate a lot of its features to get around such polyclonal defenses.
But let’s say SARS2 did mutate enough to circumvent immunity generated by current vaccines... a common question is how quickly we could modify existing vaccines. In case of mRNA vaccines, companies could probably start churning out new vaccine versions within 6-8 weeks. 12/17
Trouble is you would need to double up the dose. You would have to vaccinate people against both original & mutant strain (since original isn’t being replaced by variant), just like current flu vaccines consist of 4 versions to protect against 4 most common strains each season.
But doubling dose of mRNA would be painful. mRNA vaccines are already more uncomfortable than any other vaccines out there (Shingrix) b/c of how strongly they stimulate immune system.
Sanofi $SAN $SNY to acquire Kymab, adding KY1005 to its pipeline, a human monoclonal antibody targeting key immune system regulator OX40L
1.45b$ total
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/01/11/2155914/0/en/Sanofi-to-acquire-Kymab-adding-KY1005-to-its-pipeline-a-human-monoclonal-antibody-targeting-key-immune-system-regulator-OX40L.html#.X_wDlDuwIyg.twitter