The study is designed to support the regulatory approval process in China and confirm that the safety and immunogenicity profile observed in German and US trials is comparable to that of Chinese participants, according to BioNTech.

The World Health Organization has recently added further biosimilar versions of trastuzumab to its list of prequalified products, along with Roche’s original trastuzumab and rituximab brands, Herceptin and MabThera/Rituxan.

Japan’s largest pharma company says it has seen no impact on its financial results so far from the coronavirus pandemic, with continuing growth for mainstay drugs, and raises its profit forecasts for the fiscal year on favorable one-off factors.

There are reports that the US biotech is considering pricing its as-yet-unapproved mRNA-1273 at $25-30 a dose, a price which would double as both a prime and boost dose would be administered.