Covid-19 Vaccines, Therapies – 17 August 2020

BioRender Covid-19 vaccine and therapy tracker. (BioRender.com)

17 Aug. 2020. A continuing feature on Science & Enterprise is a weekly statistical report of vaccines and therapies for Covid-19 offered by BioRender, a scientific illustration software company. BioRender, in Toronto, Ontario, develops graphics tools for life sciences, biotechnology, and other disciplines.

Since our last report, all of the new activity is taking place in therapies. The number of new Covid-19 therapies increased by eight over the past week to 364, while the number of therapies in clinical trials also jumped by eight to 278. Among vaccines, 41 of the 164 candidates are in clinical trials, in some cases late-stage trials, but the numbers of those vaccines have not changed since last week.

In addition to the summary dashboard shown above, the BioRender Covid-19 vaccine and therapy page provides details of the vaccines and therapies, as well as an activity feed showing news updates on these drugs.

For people in the pharma or biotech industries, the speed of developing Covid-19 vaccines and treatments is nothing short of breathtaking. But according to the New York Times on Friday, trials of engineered antibody treatments are starting to lag. Health care and business reporter Katie Thomas focuses largely on antibody therapies by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly & Co. on which Science & Enterprise reported a few times.

The companies are finding it difficult to enroll the number of patients needed for those trials due to strained staffing resources at medical center sites, reluctance of patients, and even a shortage of physical space. In some trials, patients need to be tested quickly for Covid-19 infections, but delays in reporting the tests are making it difficult to measure efficacy of the antibodies. As a results, deadlines originally set for this summer, are being set back to later in the year.

More from Science & Enterprise:

• Infographic – Split U.S. Decision on Covid-19 Vaccine
• Trial Testing Rare Disease Drug for Covid-19 Pneumonia
• Covid-19 Vaccines, Therapies – 10 August 2020
• Grant Funds Placenta Stem Cell Trial Sites for Covid-19
• NIH Begins Covid-19 Antibody Trials

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