April 26 Quick Takes: U.S. to release 60M doses of AZ vaccine to other countries; plus IP pact, ADC, GSK, uniQure, Hua, Reata, Axsome and more

The U.S. will release 60 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca plc (LSE:AZN; NASDAQ:AZN) and the University of Oxford to other countries as they become available, according to Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser on COVID response. “There are still very few available,” Slavitt tweeted, adding that “no real time has been lost.”

A group of 25 biopharma companies and five trade associations have signed onto an IP Principles for Advancing Cures and Therapies (IP PACT) document that underlines their view that IP is critical for medical progress, and commits them to “engage in approaches to IP in Least Developed Countries that take into account their unique challenges.” These approaches “may include voluntary licensing, non-assert policies or selective approaches to filing, in addition to supporting capacity-building initiatives which can foster a dynamic local innovation ecosystem.”...