The story grabbing all the attention in October was the piece on Moderna engaging with international regulators to accelerate approval of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine - mRNA-1273.
The developer's rolling submission was accepted under the Canadian Minister of Health's Interim Order, which permits companies to present safety and efficacy data and information as they become available, without waiting for studies to end. Such an approach to reviews could speed up the process of approving a successful COVID-19 vaccine.
The company also announced that its application for real-time review of mRNA-1273 in Europe had been accepted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Another big hitter last month was a piece, first published in September, on a new preventative nasal spray treatment that could reportedly protect people from COVID-19 infection and prevent transmission.
The novel therapy was developed by Australian biotech company, Ena Respiratory, with a study indicating it significantly reduced COVID-19 virus levels in the nose and throat. It also reduced COVID-19 replication by up to 96%, found the research, which was performed by Public Health England (PHE) scientists.
This one got you clicking - Pfizer announcing its COVID-19 vaccine timeline mid-way through last month.
The pharma giant said, at that juncture, that it ‘may know’ whether or not the vaccine candidate was effective by the end of October, with safety data expected in the third week of November. Pfizer said then it would apply for an EUA ‘soon after’ this safety data is available.
To great global fervour Pfizer actually only revealed on Monday [November 9] that Phase 3 interim analysis shows its mRNA vaccine candidate is more than 90% effective.
A story on the learnings for the future from the extremely fast-paced COVID-19 vaccine development work since January 2020 came in fourth in the rankings last month.
We captured five takeaways from expert discussions at the CPhI Festival of Pharma on the legacies from that rapid R&D effort.
Coming in at number five in the rankings, was a piece on the BCG vaccine, how scientists in the UK would begin recruiting frontline healthcare workers to see whether an old vaccine used to combat tuberculosis (TB), the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin or BCG jab, could be used to help boost immunity against the novel coronavirus as well.
The University of Exeter in England is leading the UK arm of the global study.