Pardes Biosciences Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Pardes Biosciences shares interim Phase 1 data on oral COVID-19 antiviral

Pardes Biosciences (NSDQ:PRDS) said its PBI-0451 twice-daily COVID-19 pill candidate had favorable tolerability and good oral bioavailability, based on interim data from an ongoing Phase 1 trial.

The company also said the drug candidate lacked clinically significant drug-drug interactions.

PRDS shares ticked down 8.70% to $10.29 today.

“We’re very encouraged by the safety profile and bioavailability profile we’re seeing to date,” said Brian Kearney, chief development officer at Pardes Bio, in an investor call.

Pardes Biosciences also noted that, in the interim results, PBI-0451 administered twice-daily maintained pharmacokinetics exposures anticipated to deliver strong antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2.

The company plans on launching a Phase 2/3 study in the middle of 2022.

At present, two oral antivirals have won emergency use authorization (EUA) in the U.S.

FDA authorized Paxlovid from Pfizer (NYS…

The top 5 drug discovery stories of 2021

Image courtesy of Pixabay

The pandemic continued to remake the pharma and biotech industry this past year. A handful of companies fared exceptionally well at commercializing COVID-19 therapies. This fact promises to lead to sizable shifts in the rankings of pharma leaders. These trends were not yet evident in our spring roundup of the 50 largest pharma companies, which drew revenue figures from the prior year. But in 2021, companies like Pfizer and Moderna sold tens of billions of dollars of COVID-19 vaccine alone. As a result of the ongoing pandemic, significant shifts are likely in 2022’s forthcoming ranking of pharma leaders.

Here, we provide an opportunity to review the 2021 pharma landscape, including stories that received the most attention on social media.

1. Pharma 50: The 50 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world

The top 50 largest pharmaceutical companies raked in $851 billion…

Pardes Biosciences gets patent related to SARS-CoV-2 antiviral

Pardes Biosciences, a biopharma upstart based in Carlsbad, California, has announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a new patent No. 11,124,497. The patent relates to compounds intended to inhibit the main protease (Mpro) of SARS-CoV-2.

“This issued patent is the first from our growing IP portfolio and reflects our commitment to discovering and developing novel therapies for important unmet medical needs,” said Uri Lopatin, the company’s CEO, in a statement.

The company filed its first patent applications in April 2020. Pardes was founded in late February.

Last month, the company announced that it had launched a first-in-human trial for its SARS-CoV-2 antiviral.

Oral antivirals offer promise in battling the pandemic in the long term in terms of reducing the severity of COVID-19 infections and potentially reducing transmission.

“This goes back to breaking the [viral] replication machinery,” said Lopatin. If peopl…

An inside look at Pardes Biosciences’ oral coronavirus protease inhibitor

Two months after exiting stealth mode via a SPAC merger, the early-stage biopharma Pardes Biosciences (Palo Alto, California) has launched a first-in-human trial for its investigational COVID-19 pill PBI-0451.

The origins of the company stretch back to the early days of the pandemic, said Dr. Uri Lopatin, CEO and co-founder of the company.

A visiting partner at the startup accelerator Y Combinator, Lopatin discussed the novel coronavirus with Lee Arnold, a Ph.D. chemist and former chief scientific officer of Assembly Biosciences, which Lopatin had also co-founded.

Lee remarked that the novel coronavirus bore a resemblance to SARS and MERS.

In particular, the SARS-CoV-2 main protease resembled those from other beta coronaviruses, which is one of four groupings of such spike-crowned viruses.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Lee recalled that scientists had worked diligently on protease inhibitors targeting SARS and MERS. That work was now …

Pardes Biosciences launches first-in-human trial for SARS-CoV-2 antiviral

A handful of companies may have a lock on COVID-19 vaccines, but competition is heating up in antivirals targeting the novel coronavirus.

One of the latest entrants is Pardes Biosciences (Carlsbad, Calif.), which recently announced a Phase 1 trial for PBI-0451, an oral antiviral targeting SARS-CoV-2.

Other companies developing antivirals for COVID-19 include Pfizer as well as Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. In addition, Gilead Sciences scored the first FDA approval for COVID-19 with its broad-spectrum IV-based antiviral Remdesivir, which it first envisioned as an Ebola treatment.

PBI-0451 inhibits viral main protease (Mpro).

Researchers have validated viral proteases over the years for viruses such as hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus.

Given their mode of action, oral antivirals could also be effective against variants of concern.

Mpro is common across SARS-CoV-2 variants as well as multiple other coronavi…