After months of uncertainty and anxious glances across the water as potential Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers made deal after deal with other political blocs, the EU over the past four weeks has made rapid strides toward securing supplies for its 27 member states.
Sanofi has agreed to buy US-based Principia Biopharma for $3.68 billion, strengthening its pipeline of treatments for autoimmune disorders. The deal gives the French drugmaker access to Principia’s bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors, which are showing promise in blocking or disrupting the signaling processes that cause inflammation and tissue destruction in autoimmune diseases.
Lagging behind other big names of late in announcing Covid-19 vaccine supply deals, French and British drugmakers Sanofi and GlaxoSmithkline together nailed down agreements with the US and UK at the end of last week. The companies have hinted that a deal with the EU could be reached shortly.
European officials recently began talking to companies developing Covid-19 vaccines about supplying the EU’s 27 member states, in hope that none would fall behind bigger markets such as the US, which began making exclusive deals early on. Now Reuters suggests the talks may have hit a snag.
The UK will not participate in a plan to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine to Europe’s most vulnerable citizens first. Tim Barrow, the UK’s ambassador to the EU, said in a letter to the European Commission the British government would not join the effort because as a non- EU member it would have no decision-making power in negotiations about purchases.
Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines global business unit of French drugmaker Sanofi, and Translate Bio, a clinical-stage messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics company, are formally expanding their existing 2018 collaboration and license agreement to develop mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases.
Sanofi has urged the EU to create an equivalent of the US government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to coordinate research into a Covid-19 vaccine, or face being left behind.
