Mosnodenvir is designed to block interactions between two dengue virus proteins. The vaccine survived J&J’s decision last year to merge its infectious disease and vaccine operations, which saw the likes of a late-stage respiratory syncytial virus program dropped from the Big Pharma’s pipeline and an E. coli vaccine sold off to Sanofi.
Mosnodenvir has had a bumpy ride in the clinic, with J&J terminating one trial due to the effect of COVID-19 on enrollment and pausing recruitment in another study in 2022. But the loyalty to mosnodenvir appeared to pay off in October 2023, when the vaccine was shown to induce a dose-dependent antiviral effect on the detectability and onset of dengue virus serotype 3 in a phase 2 trial.
That data drop doesn’t appear to have been enough to save mosnodenvir for long, with the Big Pharma announcing this morning that it is discontinuing a follow-up phase 2 field study. The decision is related to a “strategic reprioritization of the company’s communicable diseases R&D portfolio,” added J&J, which stressed that no safety issues had been identified.
“Johnson & Johnson will continue to support the fight against dengue by sharing study results with the medical community in the future,” the pharma said in the release.
J&J had been investing in dengue for over a decade, including launching a Satellite Center for Global Health Discovery at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore in 2022. The center has been focused on accelerating early-stage discovery research to “address the growing challenge of flaviviruses” such as dengue and Zika.
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