Private Company Edition: Alexis Borisy and his Curie.Bio co-founders will invest $5m-$7m to help companies get to lead optimization within 12-18 months. Also, Feng Zhang-founded Aera launched with $193m, Hexagon Bio raised a $77.3m series B round and Halda emerged with $76m.

Codagenix hopes a 2023 data readout from its intranasal RSV vaccine will be an inflection point, even as GSK and Pfizer look to establish a lead in the segment. Meanwhile, a second cancer candidate has been added to Codagenix's preclinical pipeline and data for its COVID-19 vaccine and TNBC oncolytic virus are expected next year, CEO Robert Coleman tells Scrip.

Mucosal and other new vaccines in development should target infection and transmission prevention, as White House’s Ashish Jha calls for them to be ‘better than terrific.’ But with the market transitioning to a flu-like status, incentives for big investments seem limited.

A new global clinical trial initiative is assessing a number of second-generation candidate vaccines for COVID-19. The Australian medicines regulator has given the go-ahead for an approval application for one of the vaccines, from Taiwan’s Medigen.