Covid-19 roundup: Harvard scientist who invested in Moderna early becomes a pandemic billionaire — and he’s giving much of the money away

Covid-19 has vault­ed a Har­vard pro­fes­sor in­to the glob­al ranks of bil­lion­aires.

Tim­o­thy Springer, the soft-spo­ken, gar­den-tend­ing, Chi­nese rock-col­lect­ing im­mu­nol­o­gist made some head­lines a cou­ple years ago when it got out that he was the 4th largest share­hold­er in Mod­er­na, a com­pa­ny that was launch­ing the largest IPO in biotech his­to­ry. Springer, who made his first for­tune from sell­ing his com­pa­ny LeukoSite to Mil­len­ni­um Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for $100 mil­lion, had made an ear­ly $5 mil­lion in­vest­ment in the com­pa­ny in 2010 af­ter founder and fel­low Har­vard sci­en­tist Der­rick Rossi asked him for ad­vice on how to pitch to ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, who had con­sis­tent­ly passed on his mR­NA-based idea. Even­tu­al­ly Rossi found a tak­er in Flag­ship, who want­ed to build not sim­ply a biotech but es­sen­tial­ly a new phar­ma gi­ant. Mod­er­na went pub­lic in 2018. Springer made $400 mil­lion overnight.

Tim­o­thy Springer

Then, this year, Mod­er­na emerged as the fron­trun­ner to build a vac­cine for Covid-19, quick­ly be­com­ing the first com­pa­ny to put their vac­cine in the clin­ic and re­cent­ly nab­bing a near­ly $500 mil­lion con­tract from BAR­DA. As the virus spread and shook the glob­al econ­o­my by its roots, in­vestors poured mon­ey in­to the biotech. The stock shot up 152% in three-and-a-half months. CEO Stéphane Ban­cel, with his stock op­tions, soon be­came a bil­lion­aire.

And yes­ter­day, Bloomberg re­port­ed, so did Springer. His in­vest­ment in a friend’s start­up is now worth over $800 mil­lion. That’s a 17,000% re­turn. With his oth­er funds, that puts him in­to the biotech bil­lion­aires club, along­side folks like Robert Dug­gan and Patrick Soon-Sh­iong.

It al­so puts him along­side Zoom founder Er­ic Yuan and Do­cuSign chair­man Kei­th Krach in the per­haps un­com­fort­able but cer­tain­ly en­vi­able po­si­tion of pas­sive­ly prof­it­ing off a pan­dem­ic that has shut down the glob­al econ­o­my and cost 20 mil­lion jobs in the US alone.

Springer said his mon­ey, though, won’t stay in pock­et. Most of it will go to the In­sti­tute for Pro­tein In­no­va­tion, an open source hub he and col­league An­drew Kruse found­ed sev­er­al years ago to de­sign an­ti­bod­ies and oth­er pro­teins as cures for in­tractable dis­eases.

@mod­er­na_tx is led by great team. Since I live a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est aca­d­e­m­ic lifestyle it’s go­ing to @IPI_Pro­tein. I like ac­tive phil­an­thropy even more than ac­tive in­vest­ing. https://t.co/ek­GrFTe8DI

— tim­o­thy springer (@tim­o­th­yspringer) April 23, 2020

It suits his aca­d­e­m­ic lifestyle, he said, one cen­tered on a sin­gle home in Chest­nut Hill, aca­d­e­mics, gar­den­ing and col­lect­ing gong­shi, or schol­ar’s rocks. Still, if Mod­er­na emerges with a vac­cine for this once-in-a-cen­tu­ry virus, part of the cred­it may be­long to Springer, and to some ad­vice — and $5 mil­lion — he gave to a younger col­league a decade ago. — Ja­son Mast 

Vol­un­teers in NIH tri­al get sec­ond shot of Mod­er­na’s vac­cine

Twen­ty eight days have passed since vol­un­teers in Seat­tle re­ceived their first shot of the first Covid-19 vac­cine to be test­ed in hu­mans. And in­ves­ti­ga­tors are now wel­com­ing them back for the sec­ond in­jec­tion.

The Phase I tri­al, con­duct­ed at Kaiser Per­ma­nente in Seat­tle and Emory Uni­ver­si­ty in At­lanta, Geor­gia, tests Mod­er­na’s mR­NA vac­cine can­di­date. As safe­ty is its main end­point, the fact that it’s still go­ing on is good news.

“The tri­al hasn’t been stopped. We know from the study pro­to­col that if ad­verse events had hap­pened, the pro­to­col would have re­quired that,” Lisa Jack­son, a se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tor at Kaiser who is lead­ing the tri­al, told USA To­day. “There­fore we pre­sume those things haven’t hap­pened.”

The sec­ond shot that vol­un­teers will re­ceive is in­tend­ed to build on the im­muno­genic­i­ty giv­en by the first primer shot, so that the body can pro­duce an­ti­bod­ies more rapid­ly when it’s ex­posed to the re­al SARS-CoV-2.

Hav­ing en­rolled 45 par­tic­i­pants in the first round, the NIH is ex­pand­ing the tri­al to in­clude 60 more adults over the age of 56.

Mod­er­na — which re­cent­ly se­cured $483 mil­lion from BAR­DA to rapid­ly ramp up man­u­fac­tur­ing and re­cruit 150 more staffers — has in­di­cat­ed that it in­tends to con­tin­ue its break­neck de­vel­op­ment pace and launch a Phase II this quar­ter if the ini­tial re­sults come in pos­i­tive. — Am­ber Tong

Can Farx­i­ga pro­tect Covid-19 pa­tients from or­gan fail­ure and death? As­traZeneca launch­es PhI­II

As doc­tors be­gin to get a clear­er pic­ture of Covid-19’s clin­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions, the search for drugs to push back the most se­vere con­se­quences of SARS-CoV-2 in­fec­tion has turned up un­like­ly can­di­dates. In the lat­est ex­am­ple, As­traZeneca has launched a Phase III tri­al to test the abil­i­ty of Farx­i­ga, orig­i­nal­ly ap­proved for di­a­betes, to re­duce the risk of se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions and or­gan fail­ure.

Da­ta from its ex­ten­sive Farx­i­ga pro­gram have shown that it has a pro­tec­tive ef­fect in pa­tients with heart fail­ure with re­duced ejec­tion frac­tion (HFrEF), chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease (CKD) and type 2 di­a­betes, As­traZeneca point­ed out. Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, “car­diac, re­nal and meta­bol­ic co­mor­bidi­ties have been as­so­ci­at­ed with poor out­comes and death in Covid-19 pa­tients.”

The phar­ma gi­ant is team­ing up with Saint Luke’s Mid Amer­i­ca Heart In­sti­tute on the place­bo-con­trolled tri­al, dubbed DARE-19. It will en­roll pa­tients who have a med­ical his­to­ry of hy­per­ten­sion, ath­er­o­scle­rot­ic CV dis­ease, HFrEF, CKD or T2D, and shoot for a di­rect mea­sure of ef­fi­ca­cy: time to first oc­cur­rence of death from any cause or new/wors­ened or­gan dys­func­tion.

All pa­tients will re­ceive stan­dard-of-care ther­a­py.

As­traZeneca has been ac­tive re­pur­pos­ing some of its biggest drugs for Covid-19, re­cent­ly kick­ing off a piv­otal tri­al for the BTK in­hibitor Calquence. That’s on top of ef­forts to dis­cov­er new an­ti­body-based treat­ments that could be de­ployed ear­li­er in dis­ease pro­gres­sion. — Am­ber Tong

Pan­dem­ic im­pacts close to two-thirds of one CRO’s clin­i­cal sites

We’ve all heard, through up­dates from bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies here and there, how the pan­dem­ic is weigh­ing on clin­i­cal tri­als. But what’s the sit­u­a­tion like from a bird’s eye view? A con­tract re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion has pro­vid­ed an­oth­er da­ta point.

ICON, which op­er­ates in 40 coun­tries, re­port­ed in its quar­ter­ly up­date that around 65% of its glob­al clin­i­cal sites were im­pact­ed in some way by the pan­dem­ic.

“Fur­ther­more, we are see­ing Site ID & en­roll­ment de­lays due to site clo­sures and move­ment re­stric­tions on pa­tients. We are proac­tive­ly re­view­ing and agree­ing to al­ter­na­tive ap­proach­es with cus­tomers on a study-by-study ba­sis, in­clud­ing re­mote and risk based mon­i­tor­ing and ‘at home’ ser­vices de­liv­ered through our Sym­pho­ny Clin­i­cal Re­search group,” the com­pa­ny wrote.

Ex­ecs are adopt­ing a cost con­tain­ment plan to weath­er the cri­sis, in­clud­ing salary re­duc­tions, a re­cruit­ment freeze, cut­ting con­trac­tors and oth­er ex­pen­di­tures.

The sil­ver lin­ing is that op­er­a­tions in Chi­na, which be­gan hav­ing is­sues in Feb­ru­ary, are see­ing con­di­tions im­prove since mid-March with sites re-open­ing and mon­i­tor­ing ac­tiv­i­ties re­sum­ing. — Am­ber Tong

UK out­lines na­tion­wide study to test for virus, an­ti­bod­ies and gauge the scale of the out­break

The UK will con­duct a large na­tion­al study to sur­vey the rate of Covid-19 in­fec­tion in its pop­u­la­tion — which should yield cru­cial num­bers to in­form when it can re­lax lock­down mea­sures.

Over 300,000 peo­ple will be test­ed reg­u­lar­ly for the coro­n­avirus over the next year for the virus via self-ad­min­is­tered swabs, 1,000 of whom will al­so be asked to pro­vide blood sam­ples to see if they’ve de­vel­oped an­ti­bod­ies against the virus. Sci­en­tists at Ox­ford are in the process of val­i­dat­ing an an­ti­body test for the tri­al af­ter find­ing that most of the kits the gov­ern­ment has pur­chased give in­ac­cu­rate re­sults.

Health sec­re­tary Matt Han­cock said the study should “con­tin­ue to build up our un­der­stand­ing of this new virus,” such as the ex­tent of com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sion and how long im­mu­ni­ty lasts. A pi­lot will be­gin short­ly in­volv­ing 20,000 house­holds.

IQVIA will dis­patch its nurs­es to con­duct home vis­its where they will ask the par­tic­i­pants ques­tions and, when an an­ti­body test is in­volved, draw blood sam­ples. — Am­ber Tong

Chi­nese vac­cine de­vel­op­er notch­es loan and land to scale up man­u­fac­tur­ing as hu­man study gets un­der­way

Sino­vac — one of two Chi­nese de­vel­op­ers to get IND clear­ance for a coro­n­avirus vac­cine tri­al in re­cent days — has quick­ly racked up new loans and land to man­u­fac­ture up to 100 mil­lion shots a year.

The Bank of Bei­jing pro­vid­ed an $8.5 mil­lion (RMB$60 mil­lion) cred­it line to match Sino­vac’s own in­vest­ment while the city gov­ern­ment gave it ac­cess to 70,000 square me­ters of land in the Dax­ing dis­trict. The biotech plans to build a large pro­duc­tion com­plex for mul­ti­ple prod­ucts, with one plant de­vot­ed to the coro­n­avirus vac­cine if it proves ef­fec­tive in tri­als.

“It took one, two weeks for the (lo­cal gov­ern­ment) de­ci­sion,” an anony­mous ex­ec told Reuters. “Pre­vi­ous­ly, two years wouldn’t have been long enough to com­plete ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

The speed un­der­scores the ur­gency for pro­tec­tion against a dead­ly dis­ease that’s killed thou­sands in Chi­na and more than 180,000 world­wide.

Sino­vac is a Nas­daq-list­ed com­pa­ny that mar­kets vac­cines for he­pati­tis A, he­pati­tis B and H1N1 in­fluen­za do­mes­ti­cal­ly. — Am­ber Tong

Azar re­lied on trust­ed aide and side­lined Hahn in ear­ly days of coro­n­avirus re­sponse — re­ports

FDA Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Hahn was ex­clud­ed from the coro­n­avirus task force ear­ly in the US out­break on HHS sec­re­tary Alex Azar’s or­der, Reuters re­port­ed. Rather, the for­mer in­dus­try ex­ec tapped his chief of staff, who had to co­or­di­nate his agency’s re­sponse.

Bri­an Har­ri­son had worked in the of­fice of the deputy HHS sec­re­tary in the George W. Bush ad­min­is­tra­tion — over­lap­ping with Azar’s ear­li­er HHS tenure — and held oth­er fed­er­al po­si­tions be­fore go­ing off to run busi­ness­es in Texas, in­clud­ing a stint breed­ing labradoo­dles, ac­cord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal. He was re­cruit­ed back to the HHS in 2018 and pro­mot­ed to chief of staff last June.

Be­fore Vice Pres­i­dent Pence took over from Azar as the head of the coro­n­avirus task force, he re­port­ed­ly served as the key man­ag­er through whom “every­one had to re­port up.” Some White House of­fi­cials ap­par­ent­ly called him “the dog breed­er,” sources told Reuters.

The new re­ports in­ten­si­fy some ap­par­ent in-fight­ing with­in the top de­part­ments tasked with tack­ling the biggest pub­lic health cri­sis the coun­try has seen in years. Rick Bright, un­til re­cent­ly the chief of Bio­med­ical Ad­vanced Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty — an­oth­er HHS unit — said he was oust­ed be­cause he stood against “drugs, vac­cines and oth­er tech­nolo­gies that lack sci­en­tif­ic mer­it.” Specif­i­cal­ly, he cit­ed his cau­tious stance on chloro­quine and hy­drox­y­chloro­quine, which Pres­i­dent Trump tout­ed as po­ten­tial game-chang­ers with­out de­fin­i­tive ev­i­dence. — Am­ber Tong

So­cial im­age: Tim­o­thy Springer (Boston Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal)

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