The news in August that Moderna’s next-gen COVID-19 booster had become the first authorized Omicron-specific bivalent vaccine was shared widely on social media platforms.
The UK’s regulatory agency gave the green light to Moderna’s Spikevax Bivalent Original/Omicron booster shot that month, for use in individuals over 18 years of age.
“The first generation of COVID-19 vaccines being used in the UK continue to provide important protection against the disease and save lives. What this bivalent vaccine gives us is a sharpened tool in our armoury to help protect us against this disease as the virus continues to evolve,” commented Dr June Raine, MHRA chief executive, at the time.
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Plenty of readers engaged with a story published last month, one about a brain cancer vaccine succeeding at prolonging survival in a Phase 3 trial.
The readout of the study of Northwest Biotherapeutics’s DCVax-L vaccine indicated extended survival in patients with gliobastoma for many months, or in some cases, years.
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A story about how 2023 will be a ‘transition year’ for COVID-19 vaccines, had readers posting.
The model for such shots will undoubtedly change next year: but what this will look like in terms of key metrics such as number of doses and revenues remains in question.
Both Pfizer and Moderna compare the likely COVID-19 vaccine opportunity to flu volumes, although analysts are less convinced that the uptake will match these expectations.
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A story, published in April, about Kaleido Biosciences shutting up shop and bluebird bio restructuring got readers' keyboards rattling.
Bleubird bio, among others, noted the “tough biotech market” in 2022, which it saw had taken some traditional financing off the table, in the near term.
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A story about Biogen's pricing model for its Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, released in December 2021, continued to generate interest over the following months.
When approved by the US FDA in June, the drug became the first new drug to treat Alzheimer’s since 2003. However, the approval proved controversial.
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Readers also engaged with a piece from last March about innovation, mRNA style.
The first participant was dosed, back then, in a Phase 1 clinical trial of HIV trimer mRNA vaccine candidate mRNA-1574.
The US trial was set to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of three candidates, also exploring different dose levels, representing the second HIV vaccine trial initiated by Moderna this year, with another Phase 1 trial testing HIV vaccine antigens.
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A story about Sanofi and Provention Bio's alliance on the first ever disease-modifying therapy for type 1 diabetes (T1D) patients got people sharing on social media networks.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Biologics License Application (BLA) for TZIELD (teplizumab-mzwv) in November. It is an anti-CD3-directed antibody, for intravenous use, and the first and only immunomodulatory treatment to delay the onset of Stage 3 T1D in adult and pediatric patients aged 8 years and older with stage 2 T1D.
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There was also a lot of interest in the lecanemab trial read-out.
Industry insiders said the trial would have a sizeable impact on the path forward for other biopharma companies developing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
Co-developed by Eisai and Biogen, the companies announced positive findings on the drug from the Clarity AD phase 3 trial on September 27, with the results suggesting lecanemab can slow cognitive and functional decline in a group of patients in the early stages of the disease.
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