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French drugmaker Sanofi SA (SASY.PA) said on Tuesday it expects to get approval for the potential COVID-19 vaccine it is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L) by the first half of next year, faster than previously anticipated. (Blamont, 6/23)

The drug maker Sanofi Pasteur has been more cautious than some of its rivals in projecting when its Covid-19 vaccines might be ready. Now, it’s announcing an acceleration of clinical trials to reach the market faster — and striking a $425 million deal to broaden its partnership with a smaller biotech company to develop one of them. (Branswell and Feuerstein, 6/23)

In a pre-print version of research manuscript, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, a UIUC research team proposes using saliva to test for COVID-19, rather than the more invasive nasal swab. The manuscript describes how the team is bypassing the RNA extraction step in testing, making it faster and less susceptible to shortages of scarce testing materials. (Asplund, 6/22)

China has approved a coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products’ unit to begin human testing, the company said in a filing on Tuesday. The potential vaccine, co-developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical and the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has received a certificate from the National Medical Products Administration to launch clinical trials. (6/23)

Remdesivir is at the forefront in the fight against the virus after the drug helped shorten hospital recovery times in a clinical trial. It was granted emergency use authorization in the United States and full approval in Japan. But producing and supplying billions of doses remain major concerns as the fast-spreading virus that has infected over 9 million people globally threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems around the world. (Mishra, 6/22)

The American biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences will soon start trials of an inhalable version of remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has shown promise as a therapeutic against the coronavirus in early trials, according to a statement released Monday. Remdesivir is currently given intravenously, which restricts its use to hospital settings. “That’s been the limitation” with this drug, said Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, a pulmonologist and regional director of critical care medicine at Northwell Health. Gilead’s inhalable version of the treatment would be administered through a nebulizer, a device that sends a mist of therapeutic liquid into the airway and is often used by asthma patients. (Wu, 6/22)

Two years ago, Hua Medicine turned to the public markets to help finance its ambitious diabetes program. “Our future success depends substantially on the success in China of our only clinical drug candidate, dorzagliatin,” the Shanghai-based pharma said in its IPO filing. The company kept plugging away at the effort quietly until last week, when it announced the completion of its first Phase 3 trial. (Chan, 6/22)