The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

This marks a step closer for China to have localized manufacturing capability for the German firm's vaccine. Five domestically-developed COVID-19 vaccines are being used in the country, while no foreign ones have gained regulatory approval

President Joe Biden on Wednesday threw his support behind waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, bowing to mounting pressure from Democratic lawmakers and more than 100 other countries, but angering pharmaceutical companies...

COVID-19 vaccines are key to ending the pandemic. From a humanitarian, moral and pragmatic perspective, the countries must unite to ensure fair and rapid access to these vaccines, worldwide. As political and health leaders have stressed: no one is safe until we are all safe....

According to the World Health Organization, there are 277 Covid-19 vaccines in devel-opment globally, of which 93 have entered human testing. Most of the projects in clini-cal testing are injected (78 projects representing 84 %). There are also two oral formu-lations (2 %) and seven nasal-spray formulations (8 %)...

The global active pharmaceutical ingredients market is projected to reach USD 248.3 billion by 2025 from USD 187.3 billion in 2020, at a CAGR of 5.8% during the forecast period...

The U.S. government agreed to increase Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine contract from $ 236 million to approximately $ 1.25 billion, to include additional costs related to vaccine studies. ....

Drugmaker Lonza Group, under pressure to find workers to help speed production of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine, is recruiting temporary employees from food giant Nestle to staff Swiss plants making ingredients for the shot....

Surges of new coronavirus infections blow up in various countries including India, Russia or even Japan. But Moderna's CEO, Stephane Bancel considers that the world may face a potential surplus next year in capacity...

It was 7:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve when Cha Jung-hoon, South Korea's deputy minister for small businesses, got a call from his boss to make an urgent three-hour car trip to visit syringe maker Poonglim Pharmatech...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Tuesday (April 20) the benefits of inoculating the Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine outweighed the risk of developing blood clots, after it found a link between the vaccine and rare occurrences of the side effect.

In the first three months of 2021, 15 new drugs were approved by the FDA. This result beats the 12 approvals recorded last year and far exceeds the 7 approvals in Q1 2019. Nevertheless none of the most-anticipated drug approvals in 2021 occurred during the period.

While many countries are still fighting against the pandemic and struggling to fight vaccine doses to immunize their citizens, the harmlessness of some of the available vaccines, e.g. AstraZeneca and Janssen, is now more acutely debated due to side effects, more particularly thrombosis cases, having appeared, affecting certain segments of the population.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is nearing a deal to buy pharmaceutical testing company PPD Inc. for more than $15 billion.

With more than 133.9 million people around the world diagnosed with Covid-19 on April 8, and more than 2.9 million people dead, vaccination campaigns definitely are the main barrier against the pandemic. According to study findings published in the NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), Moderna's vaccine mRNA-1273 appears to offer protection against Covid-19 for at least six months. Meanwhile, Pfizer and BioNTech's, BNT162b2, is said to be 91.3% effective at preventing the disease.

Follows reports over recent weeks of blood clots in a small number of people around the world who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Scientists have termed the condition "vaccine induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia" (VIPIT). But what does this actually mean, how significant is the risk?

Will worldwide Covid-19 deaths decrease one day? According to a Reuters tally, they are rising once again, especially in Brazil and India, crossing 3 million on April 6. As it took more than a year for the global coronavirus death toll to reach 2 million, the additional 1 million deaths occurred in about three months, in spite of vaccination efforts across the globe.

A day full of news for the two german manufacturers of anti-covid vaccines. On March 30, the two companies involved in developing a messenger RNA vaccine against Covid-19 announced important milestones. BioNTech and partner Pfizer indicated it expected to expand manufacturing capacity to up to 2.5 billion doses by end of 2021, with signed orders for 1.4 billion doses of its vaccine to date for delivery in 2021. Meanwhile CureVac disclosed it was organizing the manufacturing production of its CVnCoV vaccine candidate.

After Japan, France and the EU, now the Australian view:
"Liability issues with COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines - who should be responsible for adverse events?"

Moderna Inc, Pfizer and BioNtech are not the only companies to use messenger RNA (mRNA) in their vaccines projects. Several drug manufacturers are also working hard on this technology to develop treatments and vaccines for various diseases.

Last year, much of Europe's leaders watched with dismay as the UK and US governments struggled to deal with the pandemic. The roles quickly changed, with the UK now administering over 40 doses of vaccine per 100 people and the US over 34 doses per 100 people. Within two days, last week, the United States succeeded in vaccinating 6 million people! The European Union administered a first dose to 10.4% of the population only on March 19, 2021 and 4.5% of the population received two doses of the vaccine. ...

Collectively, we did not see it coming on such a scale. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses in global pharmaceutical supply chains— in particular the dependence on Active Pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) outsourced to Asia — and governments have responded forcefully with production relocation initiatives. Is this really a structural change or simply a short-term emotion? ...

With vaccination now well underway in every part of the world, it becomes more and more obvious that vaccine hesitancy is slowing down, whereas the need of millions of jabs is increasing...

With the FDA's authorization, end of February, for the use of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine in adults, the world scientific community now has four different vaccines at its disposal to fight the pandemic.

Joe Biden has retained Donald Trump's idea: he relies in part on drugstore and supermarket chains to administer millions of covid-19 vaccinations to Americans

With 53 drugs approved by the FDA, 2020 was very dynamic in terms of new approvals in spite of the sanitary crisis and the economic lockdown. But in the end, which products have taken the lead and reached the most sales?

The values of public CDMO shares continued to outperform in 2020, with growth for the best between 70 and over 90% (Lonza, West Pharma and Catalent).

How did major companies manage their businesses in 2020, amid Covid-19 pandemic, economic lockdowns and above all, "ups and downs" in R&D to bring to the market vaccines candidates against the virus?
PHARMAnetwork reviews the Top 5 pharmaceutical companies' 2020 financial results and 2021 forecasts.

The global market demand for anti-Covid vaccines is much higher than the current production capacities of Western countries. This demand could last for several years depending on several factors such as the duration of the effectiveness of vaccine immunization, the arrival of new variants leading to new vaccination campaigns, etc.

Year-to-date tally at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) suggests the trend for new drug approvals in 2020 hasn't suffered from the Covid-19 pandemic. At the end of the 11 Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) meetings, some 96 new medicines were approved in Europe throughout the year.

As Commissioner Stephen Hahn will depart the FDA by January 20, when the Biden administration takes office, review of drug approvals in 2020 shows the Covid-19 pandemic did not slow the trend. According to the FDA, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved 53 "first-of-their-kind medicines" for the US market....

While Pfizer/BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine candidate gained emergency use authorization in the UK on December 2, making it the first in Europe to get the green light, what happened in the rest of the pharma-industry? Many things for sure, as all companies are not exclusively working on vaccines.

The European Health Union is on track; mid-November European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen offered a €5 billion budget dedicated to health over the next seven years...

The R&D on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments is not the only goal of Big Pharma. Interest in gene therapy development remains very high, as evidenced by several recent deals and agreements.

Will aducanumab become one day the first medication approved for Alzheimer? What happened last week confirms if needed that the story has not been written yet and that the cycle failure is not over...

Were the Top 10 best-selling pharmaceutical drugs in the world impacted by social distancing measures, delays in elective surgeries, prioritization of Covid-19 patients during the first nine months of 2020? As most drugmakers have just announced their third quarter results, it is clear that Big Pharma's resilience is a reality, while blockbusters still make their way...

The annual meeting of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) took place virtually this year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. New treatment options were presented, new results were unveiled that could accelerate future adoption of medicines.

February 3, Jazz Pharmaceuticals agreed to pen a deal worth up to $7.2 billion for cannabinoid GW Pharmaceuticals, whose epilepsy med Epidiolex could become a blockbuster in sales.

NextPharma, CDMO specializing in finished oral and topical dosage forms (including sterile ophthalmics), acquires the industrial sites of Ploermel (FR) and Edinburgh (UK) from Lonza...

AstraZeneca's $39 billion acquisition of Alexion strengthens several assumptions: firstly, rare-disease segment is more and more becoming a key issue for big and small pharmaceutical companies; secondly mega-deals are not over (it is the largest deal in AstraZeneca's history). And thirdly, there is still future for the pharmaceutical industry outside Covid-19 R&D.

EQT IX, through Roar BidCo AB, announced a public offering of SEK 220 in cash per share to the shareholders of Recipharm AB and SEK 1,427,010 per Recipharm convertible bond with a par value of 1 000,000 SEK.