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It’s day two of the J.P. Morgan healthcare conference, and plenty of companies were talking about the impact of Covid. Here’s a few highlights from some of the major Covid players who presented at the conference today and yesterday:
Regeneron: In 2021, Regeneron delivered 2.8 million doses of its antibody cocktail used to treat Covid-19 and generated $5.8 billion in net sales in the U.S, CEO Leonard Schleifer said Monday. The company is looking forward to getting its newly identified monoclonal antibodies that work against the omicron variant into the market this quarter. “We have begun to scale up production,” added George Yancopoulos, the company's chief scientific officer. Regenron’s main focus in the coming years will be to deliver antibodies to immunocompromised patients, for whom vaccines are less effective. BioNTech: CEO Uğur Şahin echoed many of the same comments Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla made about the vaccine the two companies have jointly developed together, for which an omicron-specific update is expected in March. The company also discussed its AI-powered system to warn of potentially threatening new variants, which it claims was able to identify some variants of concern before the WHO did. The company’s also developing mRNA vaccines for other diseases including flu, shingles, malaria, tuberculosis and a form of herpes. Abbott: CEO Robert Ford says that Abbott is now producing over 100 million rapid tests per month globally, with capacity to ramp that up further. While the company does expect demand to drop down after the current omicron wave, it expects sustained demand for the test, particularly from schools, which can use rapid tests as tools to control outbreaks and remain open. GSK/Vir: Both GSK and Vir presented at the conference today and discuss the Covid antibody treatment the two companies developed together, sotrovimab. The companies sold over 750,000 doses of the treatment, which still shows efficacy against omicron, in 2021 and plan to produce 2 million in the first half of this year. The companies plan on filing for an EUA for an injectable version of the drug, which would make distribution easier, as it now requires an IV. Vir is also working on a next-generation antibody against Covid, as well as a pan-coronavirus vaccine and a small molecule drug that might work as a treatment against multiple respiratory infections, including the flu, Covid and RSV.
(additional reporting by Aayushi Pratap)
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