Johnson & Johnson’s covid vaccine gets another $1 billion funding boost
The Indian Express By: Bloomberg | November 15, 2020 Johnson & Johnson will spend about $604 million expanding its deal with the U.S. government to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, seeking to catch up with rivals who have forged ahead in the race. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority will commit about $454 million in additional money to the Phase 3 Ensemble trial, which seeks to evaluate the efficacy of the company’s vaccine candidate as a single-dose. Johnson & Johnson is further behind in pharmaceutical companies’ hunt to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. Top contender Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE announced this week that their vaccine appears to prevent 90% of Covid infections. J&J has enrolled only a few thousand participants in its 60,000-person trial, partly because it halted the study in October for two weeks over a safety concern. It now expects to have an initial readout of results from the trial...