PHARMACY MARKET

Pfizer and BioNTech Announce Submission of Initial Data to U.S. FDA to Support Booster Dose of COVID-19 Vaccine

Pfizer | August 17, 2021

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE today announced that they have submitted Phase 1 data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to support the evaluation of a third, or booster, dose of the companies’ COVID-19 vaccine (BNT162b2) for future licensure. These data also will be submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and other regulatory authorities in the coming weeks.

“The data we’ve seen to date suggest a third dose of our vaccine elicits antibody levels that significantly exceed those seen after the two-dose primary schedule. We are pleased to submit these data to the FDA as we continue working together to address the evolving challenges of this pandemic.”

“Vaccination is our most effective means of preventing COVID-19 infection – especially severe disease and hospitalization – and its profound impact on protecting lives is indisputable. Still, with the continuing threat of the Delta variant and possible emergence of other variants in the future, we must remain vigilant against this highly contagious virus,” said Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer. “The data we’ve seen to date suggest a third dose of our vaccine elicits antibody levels that significantly exceed those seen after the two-dose primary schedule. We are pleased to submit these data to the FDA as we continue working together to address the evolving challenges of this pandemic.”

“We continuously strive to stay at least one step ahead of the virus. This is why we aim to expand access to our vaccine for people around the world and are working on various approaches as part of our comprehensive strategy to address the virus and its variants today as well as in the future,” said Ugur Sahin, M.D., CEO and Co-founder of BioNTech. “This initial data indicate that we may preserve and even exceed the high levels of protection against the wild-type virus and relevant variants using a third dose of our vaccine. A booster vaccine could help reduce infection and disease rates in people who have previously been vaccinated and better control the spread of virus variants during the coming season.”

Pfizer and BioNTech have submitted Phase 1 data – part of their Phase 1/2/3 clinical trial program – evaluating the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in U.S. adult participants from the Phase 1 trial of the two-dose series. Participants received a 30-µg booster dose of BNT162b2 8 to 9 months after receiving the second dose. Results from this participant group show that the third dose elicited significantly higher neutralizing antibodies against the initial SARS-CoV-2 virus (wild type) compared to the levels observed after the two-dose primary series, as well as against the Beta variant and the highly infectious Delta variant.

Phase 3 results evaluating the third dose are expected shortly and will be submitted to the FDA, the EMA and other regulatory authorities worldwide. In the U.S., Pfizer and BioNTech plan to seek licensure of the third dose via a supplemental Biologics License Application (BLA) in individuals 16 years of age and older, pending FDA approval of the primary BLA submitted in May 2021.

A third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is not currently authorized for broad use in the U.S. However, under the current amended Emergency Use Authorization, a third dose was authorized on August 12 for administration to individuals at least 12 years of age who have undergone solid organ transplantation, or who are diagnosed with conditions that are considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise. This authorization is based on information from an independent report evaluating safety and effectiveness of a third dose in people who received solid organ transplants.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, which is based on BioNTech proprietary mRNA technology, was developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer. BioNTech is the Marketing Authorization Holder in the European Union, and the holder of emergency use authorizations or equivalent in the United States (jointly with Pfizer), Canada and other countries. Submissions to pursue regulatory approvals in those countries where emergency use authorizations or equivalent were initially granted are ongoing or planned.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has not been approved or licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but has been authorized for emergency use by FDA under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) for use in individuals 12 years of age and older. The emergency use of this product is only authorized for the duration of the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of the medical product under Section 564 (b) (1) of the FD&C Act unless the declaration is terminated or authorization revoked sooner.

AUTHORIZED USE IN THE U.S.:

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID19 Vaccine is authorized for use under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for active immunization to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in individuals 12 years of age and older.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION
  • Do not administer Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to individuals with known history of a severe allergic reaction (eg, anaphylaxis) to any component of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine
  • Appropriate medical treatment used to manage immediate allergic reactions must be immediately available in the event an acute anaphylactic reaction occurs following administration of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine
  • Monitor Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine recipients for the occurrence of immediate adverse reactions according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines
  • Reports of adverse events following use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine under EUA suggest increased risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, particularly following the second dose. The decision to administer the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to an individual with a history of myocarditis or pericarditis should take into account the individual’s clinical circumstances
  • Syncope (fainting) may occur in association with administration of injectable vaccines, in particular in adolescents. Procedures should be in place to avoid injury from fainting
  • Immunocompromised persons, including individuals receiving immunosuppressant therapy, may have a diminished immune response to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine
  • The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine may not protect all vaccine recipients
  • In clinical studies, adverse reactions in participants 16 years of age and older included pain at the injection site (84.1%), fatigue (62.9%), headache (55.1%), muscle pain (38.3%), chills (31.9%), joint pain (23.6%), fever (14.2%), injection site swelling (10.5%), injection site redness (9.5%), nausea (1.1%), malaise (0.5%), and lymphadenopathy (0.3%)
  • In a clinical study, adverse reactions in adolescents 12 through 15 years of age included pain at the injection site (90.5%), fatigue (77.5%), headache (75.5%), chills (49.2%), muscle pain (42.2%), fever (24.3%), joint pain (20.2%), injection site swelling (9.2%), injection site redness (8.6%), lymphadenopathy (0.8%), and nausea (0.4%)
  • Following administration of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, the following have been reported outside of clinical trials:
  • severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, and other hypersensitivity reactions, diarrhea, vomiting, and pain in extremity (arm).
  • myocarditis and pericarditis
  • Additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious, may become apparent with more widespread use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine
  • Available data on Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy
  • Data are not available to assess the effects of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine on the breastfed infant or on milk production/excretion
  • There are no data available on the interchangeability of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine with other COVID-19 vaccines to complete the vaccination series. Individuals who have received one dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine should receive a second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to complete the vaccination series
  • Vaccination providers should review the Fact Sheet for Information to Provide to Vaccine Recipients/Caregivers and Mandatory Requirements for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Administration Under Emergency Use Authorization.

About Pfizer:
At Pfizer, we apply science and our global resources to bring therapies to people that extend and significantly improve their lives. We strive to set the standard for quality, safety and value in the discovery, development and manufacture of health care products, including innovative medicines and vaccines. Every day, Pfizer colleagues work across developed and emerging markets to advance wellness, prevention, treatments and cures that challenge the most feared diseases of our time. Consistent with our responsibility as one of the world's premier innovative biopharmaceutical companies, we collaborate with health care providers, governments and local communities to support and expand access to reliable, affordable health care around the world. For more than 170 years, we have worked to make a difference for all who rely on us.

Spotlight

Connectivity in general is becoming an ever more important consideration for production facilities as we endeavour to produce more with less and all the while trying to satisfy an increasing need for more information and communication to and from the production equipment itself.

Spotlight

Connectivity in general is becoming an ever more important consideration for production facilities as we endeavour to produce more with less and all the while trying to satisfy an increasing need for more information and communication to and from the production equipment itself.

Related News

BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMACY MARKET

Patsnap Unveils Synapse Visitor, the Latest AI-Powered Pharmaceutical Intelligence Platform

Prnewswire | April 25, 2023

On April 20, Patsnap, the world's leading SaaS provider for intelligence, announced the launch of its latest version of the intelligence platform, Synapse, available to visitors. This version includes advanced search functions for drugs and pharmaceutical organizations, now publicly accessible for the first time. Users can explore these features without prior registration, making searching easier and more accessible than ever before. Synapse is an innovative Life Sciences Platform that uses AI technology to connect Drug Discovery information with Drug Development insights. This allows professionals in the pharmaceutical industry to make better-informed decisions throughout the entire innovation cycle. With a vast database of millions of free data points from over 150 jurisdictions, Synapse provides access to over 72,000 new drugs, 800,000 clinical trials, 6 million pharmaceutical patents, 62 million literature sources, 360,000 pharmaceutical organizations, and more. This wealth of information is available to users to aid them in their research and decision-making processes. One of the key benefits of Synapse is its extensive database of drugs, particularly those in their preclinical or early developmental stages, which helps to mitigate potential risks for professionals in the pharmaceutical industry. "We want to ensure that we are only developing drugs that are efficiently managed, reducing the risks of failure at the later stages of development," said one of our key clients, the head of R&D. By having access to this valuable information, professionals can make more informed decisions and focus their efforts on drugs with a higher potential for success, ultimately saving time and resources. Available on Synapse's website as a free solution, key features include Drug Advanced Search:Quickly and accurately identify drugs based on specific criteria of interest. The search function covers global drug candidates and marketed drugs, and mines preclinical R&D intelligence in patents and literature to identify early competitive risks. Clinical Progress:Screen clinical trials by drugs, institutions, targets (multi-target), indications, clinical trial phase, and other conditions. Synapse collates data from 18 registries, including CT.gov and WHO, giving users a global view of the clinical landscape. Playbook: Access multiple data sets with a single search, including Due Diligence and Find Organizations. This feature provides comprehensive and visualized insights into the organization's R&D preferences, drug pipeline, investments, financing, and more. Literature Search:With over 62 million literature records in the life sciences field, users can easily screen literature by drugs, targets, indications, authors, and other criteria. This feature allows for efficient and targeted research, saving time and increasing productivity. About Patsnap Founded in 2007, Patsnap is the company behind the world's leading AI-powered innovation intelligence platform. Patsnap provides global businesses with a connected, easy-to-use platform that helps them make better decisions in the innovation process. Customers are innovators across multiple industry sectors, including agriculture and chemicals, consumer goods, food and beverage, life sciences, automotive, oil and gas, professional services, aviation and aerospace, and education.

Read More

BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMACY MARKET

PathAI Announces PathExplore, an AI-powered Pathology Panel to Unlock Untapped Insights from the Tumor Microenvironment

Prnewswire | April 05, 2023

PathAI, a global leader in AI-powered pathology, announced the launch of PathExplore™, the world's first structured, standardized and scalable panel of human interpretable features (HIFs) offering unprecedented resolution of the tumor microenvironment (TME) from H&E whole-slide images. Powered by artificial intelligence, PathExplore1 spatially characterizes the TME with single-cell resolution, giving oncology drug developers the ability to unlock insights to inform the next phase of targeted oncology drug development. The last decade has seen significant strides in oncology therapeutic development, but challenges remain – many cancer patients do not respond to available treatment, and many aren't eligible for potentially transformative therapies because of a lack of actionable insight into their disease. Researchers are looking to the tumor microenvironment, one of the most promising areas of oncology research, for answers and insights that will impact patient outcomes. "PathExplore will enable researchers to identify novel spatial signatures predictive of outcomes," said Andy Beck, M.D., Ph.D., chief executive officer and co-founder of PathAI. "We're hopeful that by giving oncology drug developers access to this level of detail and data from routine H&E samples, this next generation of pathology will drive advances in cancer therapy development." Current technologies to measure and analyze the TME force researchers to make tradeoffs between resolution and scalability. Now with PathExplore, drug developers will have the ability to analyze the TME with deep resolution using a scalable platform that can be deployed on massive numbers of patient samples. PathExplore produces a panel of more than 600 quantitative HIFs: standardized and reproducible measures of counts, densities, areas and spatial relationships across cell types and tissue regions. PathExplore also generates overlay visualizations of cell types and tissue regions, delivered on PathAI's AISight™ Translational Research platform. PathExplore has been trained using over 6.5 million pathologist annotations on 66,000 slides. It is currently available for breast cancer, colorectal cancer, gastric cancer, melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and renal cell carcinoma, with more indications planned to launch later this year, including ovarian and bladder cancers. The standardized, structured quantification of the TME across disease areas will enable reproducible, comparable, and scalable analysis across drug programs. "PathExplore will shift the research paradigm, bypassing long standing constraints we experience with some of the existing multi-omics modalities and allowing for more open exploration and discovery of relationships that were not identifiable by human analysis alone," said Mike Montalto, PhD, chief scientific officer at PathAI. "The degree of granularity, speed, efficiency and scale delivers unmatched insights that will change the way we view the tumor microenvironment." PathAI's HIFs have been used in over 15 scientific abstracts, presentations, and publications. To learn more about PathExplore, visit www.PathExplore.com or visit us at booth 315 at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) April 14th-19th in Orlando, FL. About PathAI PathAI is the only AI-focused technology company to provide comprehensive precision pathology solutions from wet lab services to algorithm deployment for clinical trials and diagnostic use. Rigorously trained and validated with data from more than 15 million annotations, its AI-powered models can be leveraged to optimize the analysis of patient samples to improve diagnostic efficiency and accuracy, as well as to better gauge therapeutic efficacy and accelerate drug development for complex diseases.

Read More

BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMACY MARKET

PCI Pharma Services Announces New Sterile Fill-Finish Capabilities Now Available in Melbourne and San Diego

Businesswire | April 24, 2023

PCI Pharma Services a leading global contract development and manufacturing organization announced that three new state-of-the-art automated sterile fill-finish machines at its San Diego and Melbourne facilities are now fully operational. The innovative machinery from Cytiva can be used to fill various sterile medications into vials and syringes for small-to-mid scale client needs. The equipment, paired with PCI’s end-to-end services, accelerates Speed to Study™, and drastically decreases the average turnaround time from proposal signing to the injectable product’s distribution. “As the capacity for CDMOs worldwide to take on new projects shrinks, we’re excited to be able to offer integrated sterile fill-finish capabilities, alongside our clinical packaging facilities, to new and existing clients in Melbourne and San Diego,” said Brad Payne, Chief Operating Officer, PCI Pharma Services. “Our increased capacity, stockpile of standardized components, including glass, and technical expertise means we can start running batches as soon as needed. This will cut down on the wait times many pharmaceutical companies are facing and begin to help alleviate the global capacity shortage for sterile drug product and downstream packaging.” The Microcell Vial Filler and SA25 Aseptic Filling Workcell at PCI’s San Diego facility ensures the delivery of medicines from phase I through phase III, supporting local and global Clinical client needs. Additionally, a Microcell Vial Filler at Melbourne further enhances the early-stage services offered and brings additional capacity to Australia—the world’s leading phase I environment. These advanced machines expedite the filling process with automation and remove the need for human intervention in a sterile environment, creating compliance advantages over standard equipment. “There are less barriers to entry to start a clinical trial in Australia, as well as significant cost benefits, and with Melbourne being an especially popular place to conduct phase I trials, we knew we needed to bring this capability and added capacity to the local market,” said Tim Roberts, Chief Commercial Officer, PCI Pharma Services. “In addition, we are then able to take our clients through their lifecycle journeys with the expansions and advanced capabilities in our New Hampshire and Madison campuses. With successful recent inspections at our Bedford facility by the Brazilian (ANVISA) and Japanese (PDMA) regulatory authorities, our global reach to supply life-changing therapies to patients quickly and safely is wider than before.” To better support its clients throughout the world, PCI has also recently invested in expansions in Rockford, IL, and Tredegar, Wales, as well as established new facilities in Bedford, NH, and Bridgewater, MA. About PCI Pharma Services PCI is a leading global CDMO, providing clients with integrated end-to-end drug development, manufacturing and packaging capabilities that increase their products’ speed to market and opportunities for commercial success. PCI brings proven experience that comes with more than 50 successful product launches each year and over five decades in the healthcare services business. We currently have 30 sites across seven countries (Australia, Canada, U.S., Ireland, Wales, Germany and Spain) and over 4,300 employees that work to bring life-changing therapies to patients. Leading technology and continued investment enable us to address global drug development needs throughout the entire product life cycle – from manufacturing capabilities through the clinical trial supply chain and into commercialization. Our clients view us as an extension of their business and a collaborative partner with the shared goal of improving patients’ lives.

Read More