Novartis to push ahead with Covid treatment after promising tests

Novartis facility at Ringaskiddy in Cork. The company is 'exercising an option' to license Ensovibep.

Novartis will push forward with a potential medicine for Covid-19 after promising results showing a lower risk of bad outcomes for patients who took the antiviral in a mid-sized study. The company employs 1,400 people in Cork and Dublin.

Covid patients who took the therapy, Ensovibep, had a 78% lower risk of needing an emergency healthcare visit, being hospitalised or dying in the 407-person test. 

Novartis said it is exercising an option to license Ensovibep from its Swiss partner Molecular Partners, which will receive a payment of €144m. If it’s approved, Novartis’s antiviral would be the first to attack the coronavirus’s spike protein in multiple ways.

Meanwhile, the EU's drug regulator said it could issue within weeks a decision on whether to approve the use of Pfizer's Covid-19 pill, Paxlovid, after the US drugmaker submitted an application seeking authorisation. 

And the main Irish unit of Regeneron returned to the black in 2020 with pre-tax profits of $297.8m (€263.3m). Accounts filed by the Limerick-based Regeneron Ireland Dac show revenues climbed by over 80% to $4.68bn.

Staff numbers rose to 1,149 in the year from 924 people.

• Irish Examiner and Bloomberg