Business & Industry News Channel
In a joint press briefing today together with German Health Minister Jens Spahn, Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, and Chief Executive Officer of CureVac N.V., Franz-Werner Haas, Member of the Board of Management, Bayer AG and President of the Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division, Stefan Oelrich, made the following statement: 
AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine has been recommended for conditional marketing authorisation (CMA) in the European Union (EU) for active immunisation to prevent COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2, in individuals 18 years of age and older. 
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) announced results from in vitro neutralization studies of sera from individuals vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The sera neutralized SARS-CoV-2 with key mutations present in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and South Africa variants, as measured by studies conducted by Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). 
Sanofi and BioNTech have today entered into an agreement under which Sanofi will support manufacturing and supply of BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine which is being co-developed with Pfizer.
Sanofi will provide BioNTech access to its established infrastructure and expertise to produce over 125 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in Europe. Initial supplies will originate from Sanofi's production facilities in Frankfurt from summer of 2021.
Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today announced that the company is discontinuing development of its SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 vaccine candidates, V590 and V591, and plans to focus its SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 research strategy and production capabilities on advancing two therapeutic candidates, MK-4482 and MK-7110. Today, Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) announced results from an in vitro study that provides additional data on the capability of sera from individuals immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 to neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 U.K. strain, also known as B.1.1.7 lineage or VOC 202012/01. The results were published on the preprint server bioRxiv and submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. 
Vir Biotechnology, Inc. (Nasdaq: VIR) and GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) announced an agreement with the U.K.-based AGILE initiative to evaluate VIR-7832 in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 in a Phase 1b/2a clinical trial. VIR-7832 is a neutralising COVID-19 antibody that preclinical data suggests has two distinguishing properties: an enhanced ability to clear infected cells and the potential to enhance virus-specific T cell function, which could help treat and/or prevent COVID-19 infection. 