Washington: British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said Thursday it expects vaccine data to be available this year as it reported a solid rise in third-quarter sales.
“Results from late-stage trials are anticipated later this year, depending on the rate of infection within the communities where the clinical trials are being conducted. Data readouts will be submitted to regulators and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals,” AstraZeneca said as it released its results.
The drugmaker said global product sales, excluding payments from collaborations, rose 7% to $6.52 billion for the three months ending on September 30, on a constant-currency basis. That was ahead of a company-compiled consensus of $6.5 billion.
AstraZeneca’s Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said the results showed the drugmaker “made encouraging headway in the quarter, despite the ongoing disruption from the Covid-19 pandemic.” The company maintained its full-year guidance.
A lot of hopes have been placed on AstraZeneca this year as it’s developing a coronavirus vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The vaccine candidate, that has the technical name AZD1222, is in late stage clinical trials that are ongoing in the U.K., Brazil, South Africa and the U.S and involve around 23,000 participants.
