NEWS
LOCAL BIOPHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT CORONAVIRUS TREATMENT BY AMANDA FISCHER
Public health officials around the U.S. are predicting a second wave of the deadly novel coronavirus outbreaks later this year, and local biopharmaceutical company Emergent BioSolutions is optimistic about having coronavirus therapeutics available by then. Emergent BioSolutions President and CEO Robert G. Kramer Sr. said the company decided to work on combatting COVID-19 because public health threats are its specialty. “For 22 years, we have been focused solely on providing solutions to very complex public health threats,” Kramer said. “It’s natural because of the focus of this threat, the way we organized 12
our business and our mission of protecting and enhancing lives; this is a perfect example of what we’re made for and how we built the business.” Although the company is in the process of developing COVID-19 vaccine and therapeutics, the therapeutics are slated to be ready for public use later this year, he said. The therapeutic treatments are being developed based on Emergent’s decades-long work in the hyperimmune plasma space, Kramer explained. The company has licensed six products with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration using the same technology.
G R E AT E R L A N S I N G B U S I N E S S M O N T H LY
MAY 2020
He noted the company will use that technology and apply it to the COVID-19 virus. The company plans to create a treatment that will be made available to health care workers and patients exposed to the virus. The therapeutics will be a rescue therapy to save the lives of those who are sick and dying from the effects of the coronavirus. Kramer said Emergent expects to be in a phase-two clinical trial with its therapeutics in early summer. This phase will determine whether the therapeutics are safe for humans and if they meet their intended results. “We expect that to be a fairly short clinical trial because of the long history of safety
