Company coronavirus news summary – CureVac teams up with Bayer to support its Covid-19 vaccine – Bharat Biotech completes recruitment for its Phase III vaccine trial

8 January 2021

German biotech CureVac has struck an alliance with Bayer to support the achievement of regulatory approval for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV, as well as help initiate distribution of the vaccine. Bayer is expected to contribute its expertise in clinical trials, pharmacovigilance, regulatory affairs, medical information, supply chain performance, and backing in certain countries.

Oragenics has entered into a material transfer agreement with Adjuvance Technologies. The agreement centres around Oragenics using Adjuvance’s adjuvant TQL1055 in its Terra CoV-2 vaccine against Covid-19; adjuvants are used to enhance the immunogenicity of the vaccines. This agreement focuses on pre-clinical studies of TQL1055, but Oragenics expects to enter into a licensing agreement for Adjuvance’s adjuvant for clinical studies later in 2021.

Bharat Biotech has announced the completion of the recruitment of 25,800 people for its Phase III efficacy trial for Covaxin, its Covid-19 vaccine candidate. Over 5,000 people have already received both shots of the vaccine in the study and efficacy data is expected in March.

Turkish pharma company Abdi Ibrahim has been granted a license by the country’s health ministry to produce and fill vials of inactive and messenger RNA vaccines against Covid-19. Nezih Barut, the company’s chairman further stated that it was capable of producing 20 million vaccines.