Coronavirus company news summary – Russia approves second vaccine – Moderna allowed to apply for marketing authorisation in EU

15 October 2020 

Health authorities in Russia have approved a second Covid-19 vaccine before the Phase 3 trial. The vaccine has been created by a former bio-weapons research laboratory. This is the second time the country has bypassed approval of the drug in a desperate move to control the rising coronavirus cases.

Moderna has received a confirmation from the European Medicine Agency (EMA) to apply for a European Union marketing authorisation for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273. This followed a letter of intent submitted to allow Moderna to evaluate the prospect of submitting a Marketing Authorisation Application (MAA) for the vaccine candidate with the EMA.

Turkey is set to conduct human trials for two of its potential Covid-19 vaccines. According to the Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, these vaccine candidates are being developed locally. Approximately, 14 institutions are currently engaged in the research of a vaccine to fight the novel coronavirus disease, reported Hurriyet Daily News. There have been positive results from the pre-clinical and clinical phases of the vaccine development, Koca added.

Relief Therapeutics and NeuroRx have announced topline results from an open-label study of RLF-100 for Covid-19. In the study, 21 critical patients with respiratory failure and hospitalised in the ICU were treated with RLF-100 and were compared to 24 control patients. The study found that an overall 81% of RLF-100-treated patients survived beyond 60 days, compared to 17% of control patients. Patients who were treated with RLF-100 showed a nine-fold increase in probability of survival and recovery from respiratory failure.