Biotech attempting to contain coronavirus

Biotech companies are racing to develop a vaccine that might subdue the deadly new coronavirus. Moderna Therapeutics and Inovio Pharmaceuticals are each pivoting to focus on the virus — having received millions in funding, already, from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. The hope is to formulate a vaccine in just 16 weeks.

But history suggests the road to an effective vaccine will be long, unpredictable, and expensive, STAT’s Damian Garde writes.

“The challenges those efforts face are not insignificant,” Mark Feinberg, CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, told STAT. “It’s hard to align engaging in this sort of work with the financial realities of a small biotech company.”

Speaking of AIDS: In the interim, China is using AbbVie’s HIV drugs as a stand-in treatment for the pneumonia caused by the novel virus, Bloomberg writes. Chinese authorities recommend that coronavirus patients be given lopinavir, ritonavir, and alpha-interpheron to combat the disease. The antiretrovirals prevent HIV from binding with healthy cells and reproducing, but there is no proof that they work in a coronavirus infection.