Shelton’s NanoViricides isn’t the only Connecticut company working to combat the deadly coronavirus. A potential vaccine by French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur is being developed at Protein Sciences in Meriden.
Sanofi acquired Protein Sciences, maker of the eggless flu vaccine Flublok, in 2017.
Sanofi said in a news release it is leveraging work that Protein Sciences conducted in 2002 on a vaccine for another coronavirus, SARS, to get a jump on a vaccine for COVID-19, as the most recent coronavirus is known.
That vaccine candidate, which never made it to market and was abandoned once the SARS scare subsided, provoked an immune response and afforded partial protection in animal studies, Sanofi said.
Sanofi believes it could also protect against the latest coronavirus, which has sickened more than 88,000 people and killed more than 3,000.
Sanofi said it is working with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority (BARDA) to expedite the vaccine, using its “recombinant DNA platform,” which can speed production.
Research is being conducted at Protein Sciences’ Research Parkway facility in Meriden.
Clement Lewin, head of Sanofi’s BARDA office, told WTIC-TV News last week that the company hopes to begin human testing within a year to 18 months and have an approved vaccine within two years, although the federal government could accelerate the timeline.
“We’re very hopeful that this approach can work based on the work that was done with SARS and the fact that we actually have a platform that is able to produce large quantities of influenza vaccine,” he told Fox61.
Shelton antiviral developer NanoViricides has said previously that it is working on a treatment for COVID-19 using its nanoviricide technology, which it describes as a “Venus-fly-trap for a virus particle.”
But the company said it would need support from governmental and international agencies to advance any potential drug candidate.
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New Haven drugmaker Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, which is headed to market this week with a new migraine drug, widened its fourth-quarter and full-year losses in 2019 as it ramped up for the commercial launch and advanced several other drugs toward regulatory approval.
For the period ended Dec. 31, Biohaven reported a net loss of $149.2 million, or $2.85 a share, up from $54.75 million ($1.34 a share) during the fourth quarter of 2018. The loss was higher than Wall Street analysts’ projected $1.96 a share, according to Zacks Investment Research.
For the year, Biohaven posted a net loss of $528.8 million, or $10.91 a share, compared to $240.9 million ($6.15 a share) in 2018.
Biohaven still has plenty of cash on hand, however, with $316.7 million (excluding $1 million in restricted cash) as of Dec. 31. That’s up from $264.2 million at the end of 2018, the company reported.
Biohaven said it remains well capitalized into 2020 after netting $282.8 million from a secondary public offering in January.
“In 2019, we achieved significant progress across our entire large, late-stage portfolio of product candidates,” CEO Vlad Coric, MD, said in a statement. “We have completed hiring our commercial leadership team and have built a world-class sales organization that can fully realize the potential of our entire pipeline.”
In addition to the migraine drug, Nurtec ODT, Biohaven is testing treatments for several neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions including Alzheimer’s, ALS and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Contact Natalie Missakian at news@newhavenbiz.com
