Johnson & Johnson’s deprioritization of its infectious disease pipeline has claimed another victim in the form of its dengue virus vaccine mosnodenvir.
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.