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WELCOME TO FIERCE LIFE SCIENCES WEEKLY DIGEST

The Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine development project named its Big Pharma finalists, with the goal of delivering an effective COVID-19 vaccine in the seven months left in the year. AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna will have access to additional government funding, clinical trial assistance and manufacturing help, according to reports. But other efforts were left off the list, including Inovio, Novavax and a partnership between Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline. Meanwhile, ASCO’s virtual meeting brings new CAR-T data from Gilead and Allogene. Those stories and more follow below.

Featured Story

Pfizer, Merck, AZ, J&J and Moderna selected as 'Warp Speed' finalists: NYT

The Trump administration has selected its COVID-19 vaccine finalists for Operation Warp Speed, which aims to deliver safe and effective coronavirus vaccines to Americans by the end of the year, The New York Times reports. 

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Top Stories Of The Week

Takeda culls Shire pipeline med after no one wants it

One of the European Commission’s stipulations for Takeda’s purchase of Shire was that it divest the biopharma’s inflammatory bowel disease candidate SHP647.

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FDA pushes metformin recalls for 5 drugmakers after carcinogen contamination

After the FDA identified a likely carcinogen in samples of the broadly used diabetes med metformin, recalls appeared likely. Now it's official: The FDA is pushing five metformin manufacturers to pull their products, following in the footsteps of Zantac and blood pressure meds yanked for the same reason.

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What does it mean to #BeFierce? Our new look tells the story

A few years ago, one of our Fierce Life Sciences editors met a Big Pharma R&D chief for the first time. “You’re the ones with the scary name,” he joked. It was a glancing reference, but the comment stuck, and for good reason. We had never articulated, for ourselves or anyone else, what being Fierce actually meant.

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COVID-19 vaccine leaders talk up the need for partners, potential for a working vax by October

Leaders from four of the biggest drugmakers in the world spoke about rising to the challenge of defeating the global pandemic as scaled-up trials and a potential approval peek over the horizon.

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Sanofi loses vaccines chief Loew to Ipsen amid global attention on its COVID-19 project

Sanofi's new CEO Paul Hudson has been making his mark in the company's C-suite, and his latest round of executive shuffling will impact the company's top vaccines job—even as it's prepping its GlaxoSmithKline-partnered COVID-19 candidate. Sanofi Pasteur chief David Loew is jumping ship to fellow French pharma Ipsen as CEO.

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With protests continuing, Merck CEO Frazier urges businesses to help bridge the racial equity gap

Merck CEO Ken Frazier has spoken passionately about racial inequality in America before. Monday, amid protests and rioting over George Floyd's death, he made that passion personal. Floyd “could be me or any other African American man,” Frazier said in an interview on CNBC, going on to relate his own experiences growing up in Philadelphia—and how businesses can work to bridge opportunity gaps.

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Pfizer to funnel $500M into biotechs, offering 'crucial capital' during the COVID-19 crisis

In a pandemic world, the biotech funding environment couldn’t look brighter, and today Pfizer shone its own light.

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Univ. of Maryland researchers develop 'naked eye' COVID-19 test

Researchers at the University of Maryland are developing a simple, experimental diagnostic test for COVID-19 that could provide a visual result in 10 minutes, without any laboratory equipment.

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ASCO: Gilead CAR-T med Yescarta delivers 93% response rate in slow-growing lymphoma

Gilead Sciences is working to move CAR-T therapy Yescarta into other types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and if data from an interim trial look-in are any indication, it’s well on its way. In patients who'd relapsed or proven treatment-resistant, Yescarta spurred a benefit in 93% and cleared cancer completely in 80%, interim study data show.

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ASCO: Allogene reports 63% response rate in early trial of off-the-shelf CAR-T in lymphoma

Allogene released expanded data from a phase 1 trial of its off-the-shelf, CD19-directed CAR-T, ALLO-501, plus its antibody ALLO-647. The response rate wasn't quite as impressive as what the company reported two weeks ago, but the details could generate some excitement among Wall Street analysts.

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Resources

Whitepaper: 7 Keys to Success in Europe

White paper describing 7 keys to success for any biopharma company that is entering (or thinking about entering) Europe.

Whitepaper: The Evolution and Importance of Biomedical Ontologies for Scientific Literature

Dive into the history of biomedical classification and how these systems have evolved to address new technology and use cases.

Whitepaper: Rapid BYOD Build Timelines

This white paper covers a Phase III case study; BYOD advantages and misconceptions; and regulatory, copyright, and equivalency considerations.

Whitepaper: Keep Your GI Trials Moving During COVID-19

Learn how GI specific data capture solutions can support virtual and hybrid trials during COVID-19.

Executive Summary: Overcoming Manufacturing Challenges for Accelerated Drug Development

Regardless of the assigned FDA expedited approval designation and approach, the key action items should be: the assurance of a detail-oriented plan and the adaption of a “forward-thinking” approach that will assist in any future challenges and opportunities for growth of each project.

Presentation: Flexible Manufacturing Strategies

Get expert insights on strategies to implement flexible manufacturing and different technologies that are easily scalable and reproducible.

Executive Summary: Strategies for Flexible Manufacturing

This whitepaper discusses the benefits of end-to-end solutions and share case studies on how flexible manufacturing strategies can accommodate the changing landscape of pharmaceutical products and help bring a drug to market.

Case Study: Establishing Parameters for Success

Learn about a real-world example of how clinical supply management expertise was applied to overcome inventory challenges for a complex, global study.

Fact Sheet: Forecasting to Optimize Clinical Trial Supply Management

Whether a study is simple or highly complex, forecasting and simulation reports serve as data driven communication tools to help minimize risks and keep the study on track. Learn more about forecasting solutions for informed decision making and supporting contingency planning for clinical study.

eBook: Expecting the Unexpected: Strategies for Efficient Clinical Supply Management and Forecasting

Learn how to drive excellence within the forecasting process and utilize forecasting throughout the clinical study to better plan clinical supply budgets and project timelines. Explore how to identify potential supply-related issues before they can negatively impact your study.

Report: Decentralized Trials - Where Does the Industry Stand?

Patient-facing digital technologies are playing an important role in clinical trials for new drugs and medical devices, to the point where conducting virtual trials is becoming mainstream. But terms like remote trials, direct-to-patient trials, hybrid trials, decentralized trials, and more all add to the confusion of what makes a trial "virtual."

Case Study: Precision Analytics for Product Launch and Growth

Pharma launch teams spend significant resources on data and analytics with limited ROI. Read this case study to learn how a Life Sciences company identified two times more patients best suited for therapy, using Clarify’s deep and longitudinal patient and HCP insights. 

Whitepaper: Flexible Design for Novel Trials

Download this case study to read about how Cenduit navigated these challenges, and successfully supports the trial sponsor to execute the umbrella trial with agility.

Case Study: More Powerful Analytics Capabilities

Case Study: Oncology-focused pharmaceutical company strengthens product launch by identifying hundreds of high-value physicians with Acorn AI.