Immunogenicity data from Valneva’s COV-COMPARE study are encouraging, but the inactivated vaccine will need proper efficacy data to gain a toehold in a crowded market.

From the latest COVID-19 advances to the emergence of game changer for heart failure, Scrip’s editor in chief Eleanor Malone reviews the big stories of the past three months. Safety issues around JAK inhibitors and AAV vector-based gene therapy were also to the fore, while biopharma financing continued apace.

Gene therapy remains attractive when data show new technologies can advance the field, but gene regulation, editing and RNA therapies are grabbing investors’ attention, panelists said at ARM’s Cell and Gene Meeting on the Mesa.

After the combination's success in the non-small cell lung cancer POSEIDON study, AstraZeneca's Imfinzi and tremelimumab could now be on the way to approval as a first-line treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma.