Info look the rest up yourselves :-)24 Oct 2020 17:03
Some analysts say the company could enjoy benefits from selling its adjuvant for Covid-19 shots without impairing its lucrative vaccine business. "There is political capital to be gained from what they're doing, and there may be some financial returns to be had as well," says Andrew Baum, a Citigroup Inc. analyst who follows health care.
Glaxo says it doesn't expect to profit from its Covid-19 vaccine collaborations during the pandemic, and it will invest any short-term profits in coronavirus research and pandemic preparedness.
"The adjuvant can be equally important -- maybe crucial -- to the vaccine being effective," says Hal Barron, Glaxo's chief scientific officer and president of R&D. "We thought that's where our unique opportunity to make a difference could be.
The Team of Rivals
The alliance among drugmakers took hold in mid March as Glaxo closed labs amid a sharp uptick in Covid-19 infections around the world. Suddenly, Dr. Barron had to figure out how to run a global R&D organization under lockdown. He and his team debated which workers should be deemed essential and continue to work on-site, and which clinical trials should be paused and which ones to continue.
"I've never been in a situation like this," he says. "I wasn't sure what the right thing to do was."
Dr. Barron called Mathai Mammen, a friend who heads drug research and development at Johnson & Johnson. They compared notes on how to decide which drug studies to pause and which scientists were essential enough to continue coming in to the office. Toward the end of the call, Dr. Mammen invited Dr. Barron to join a larger group of R&D chiefs to share information about the virus and approaches to drug development, Dr. Barron says.
Glaxo had a potentially critical role to play in the response to Covid-19, as one of the world's largest vaccine sellers. Sales of its shots totaled about $9.4 billion last year, the most of any of the top four vaccine-makers globally. The company also had a history of rallying its employees to respond to pandemics. In the years leading up to the 2009 swine flu pandemic, it spent $3.2 billion on R&D, acquisitions and manufacturing in preparation for a flu pandemic.
On Sunday, March 8, many of the biggest drugmakers convened for a group call. Aside from Drs. Barron and Mammen, participants included the heads of research from AstraZeneca PLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Novartis AG, recalls Andrew Plump, president of R&D at Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., who was also on the call.
"Things were happening so, so quickly, with organizations closing down and quarantining, and beginning work-from-home policies," recalls Dr. Plump. "We were all scrambling. And there was also an immense amount of interest in all of us stepping up and trying to provide solutions."
By the end of that call, the research bosses resolved to keep the virtual meetings going and to open up the group to other companies and, occasionally, government officials such a
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