A dispute between AstraZeneca (AZ) and the European Union (EU) has reached its conclusion after months of disagreement – with a court ruling the European Commission (EC) has no ‘right of priority’ to doses over other contracting parties.

The Court of First Instance in Brussels has ruled that AZ must deliver 80.2 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine by 27 September 2021.

In its legal action against AZ, the EC had requested 120 million vaccine doses cumulatively by the end of June 2021, and a total of 300 million doses by the end of September – substantially more than the Court has ordered.

In a statement, AZ said that all other measures sought by the EC have also been dismissed, with the Court finding that the EC does not have exclusive rights to doses over other parties who have contracts with the pharma company.

AZ said that it is looking forward to a ‘renewed collaboration’ with the EC, and that it remains committed to distribution of its vaccine as laid out in the Advanced Purchase Agreement signed in August 2020.

The EC has claimed the ruling as a victory, with Commission president Ursula von der Leyen commenting that the “decision confirms the position of the Commission: AstraZeneca did not live up to the commitments it made in the contract”.

The European Commission (EC) has identified the first five drug candidates as part of a new strategy to select the preferred treatments for COVID-19 in the EU.

Among the five therapeutic candidates identified are Eli Lilly’s repurposed arthritis medicine Olumiant (baricitinib) and investigational antibody drugs for early-stage COVID-19.

This includes Lilly’s bamlanivimab and etesevimab combination, Roche and Regeneron’s REGEN-COV (casirivimab and imdevimab), Celltrion’s regdanivimab and GlaxoSmithKline/Vir Biotech’s sotrovimab.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is currently assessing an application for the extension of a marketing authorisation for Olumiant for COVID-19.

The four monoclonal antibodies selected for the EC’s COVID-19 Therapeutics Strategy are also currently being assessed under the EMA’s rolling review pathway.

“Today we are taking the first step towards a broad portfolio of therapeutics to treat COVID-19. While vaccination is progressing at increasing speed, the virus will not disappear and patients will need safe and effective treatments to reduce the burden of COVID-19,” said Stella Kyriakides, the EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety.

Now that it has identified the first five therapeutics as part of the strategy, the EC has committed to drawing up a portfolio of at least ten potential COVID-19 therapeutics by October 2021.

The US government has announced that it will invest over $3bn for the development of ‘next-generation’ antiviral treatments for COVID-19.

The Biden Administration has said the funding will go toward the discovery, development and manufacturing of antiviral medicines as part of its ‘whole-of-government’ strategy to develop next-generation COVID-19 treatments.

The Antiviral Programme for Pandemics will be implemented by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

As part of this plan, the NIH will evaluate, prioritise and advance antiviral treatment candidates to phase 2 clinical trials.

It will provide over $300m for research and lab support for potential treatments, as well as nearly $1bn for preclinical and clinical evaluation and nearly $700m for development and manufacturing through NIAID and BARDA.

The plan will also allocate up to $1.2bn to support the creation of collaborative drug discovery groups, known as the Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern.

These groups will utilise the ‘creativity’ of the biomedical research community in the US, while seeking to drive innovation in antiviral drug discovery and development.

Mixing COVID-19 vaccines as part of a two-dose schedule generates a strong immune response against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a study led by Oxford University suggests.

The Com-Cov study initially launched in February as the first trial in the world to evaluate whether different vaccines can be used safely and effectively as part of two-dose regimens.

The first results from the study suggest that two mixed schedules – a first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine followed by the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine or a first dose of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine followed by the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine – provide good protection against COVID-19.

Specifically, these mixed vaccine schedules induced high concentrations of antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike IgG protein when the doses were given four weeks apart.

However, the researchers did note some differences between the vaccine regimens, with certain schedules inducing higher antibodies and T-cell responses compared to others.

Notably, administering a first dose of the AZ/Oxford vaccine followed by the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine induced both higher antibody levels and T-cell responses compared to Pfizer/BioNTech followed by AZ/Oxford.

Both of these mixed regimens induced higher antibodies than the standard two-dose AZ/Oxford vaccine schedule, while the highest antibody response was observed following the standard two-dose Pfizer/BioNTech schedule.

Researchers also discovered that the AZ/Oxford vaccine followed by the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine induced the highest T-cell responses.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have identified 160 new drugs that have potential as repurposed treatments for COVID-19.

The study, published in Science Advances, used a combination of computational biology and machine learning to create a map of proteins involved in SARS-CoV-2 infections.

The researchers then examined this network using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the key proteins involved in infection and biological pathways that could provide targets for drugs.

Following this, the research team used computer modelling to screen almost 2,000 approved drugs, finding 200 of these could be effective against COVID-19.

Out of those identified by the Cambridge team, 40 are already in clinical trials as potential treatments for COVID-19 – a fact which the researchers say supports their approach.

The team also used an artificial neural network analysis to classify drugs depending on the role of their targets in SARS-CoV-2 infection – stratifying them into those that target viral replication and those that target immune response.

Following this, they then took a subset of those involved in viral replication and evaluated them using cell lines from humans and non-human primates.

In particular, the scientists highlighted the potential of rheumatoid arthritis medication sulfasalazine and antimalarial drug proguanil, which they say have been shown to reduce SARS-CoV-2 viral replication in cells.