Hello, everyone, and welcome to another working week. We hope the weekend respite was sufficiently distracting, if not restful, given that what now constitutes the usual routine has returned. By this we mean Zoom calls and more Zoom calls, and deadlines and those sorts of things. To cope, yes, we are firing up the coffee kettle and reaching for a cup of stimulation. Our choice today is old-fashioned hazelnut. Feel free to join us. Meanwhile, here are a few tidbits to get you going. Hope your day goes well, and stay safe. …
Hackers linked to Iran have targeted staff at Gilead Sciences (GILD) in recent weeks, according to publicly available web archives reviewed by Reuters and three cybersecurity researchers, as the company races to deploy an experimental treatment for the Covid-19 virus. In one case, a fake email login page designed to steal passwords was sent in April to a top Gilead executive involved in legal and corporate affairs, according to an archived version on a website used to scan for malicious web addresses. Reuters was not able to determine whether the attack was successful.
Gilead released a bombshell two weeks ago: A study conducted by a U.S. government agency found its experimental drug, remdesivir, was the first treatment shown to have even a small effect against Covid-19, STAT writes. Behind that ray of hope was one of the toughest quandaries in medicine: balancing a need to rigorously test a new medicine for safety and effectiveness with a moral imperative to get patients a treatment that works as quickly as possible. At the heart of the decision about when to end the trial was a process that was secretive and bureaucratic.
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May one observe that it seems “all roads lead” to Catalent? After J&J announcing last week that they would be using Catalent as a partner to produce their vaccine candidate, we now have this – Pfizer is freeing up capability to make THEIR experimental vaccine candidate and therefore “is tapping its network of around 200 outside contractors, which includes Catalent … to play a bigger role in producing some of its existing medicines.”