The world’s largest genomics study in patients with life-threatening COVID-19 infections has uncovered 16 new genetic variants associated with severe disease and drawn up a roadmap for research into new therapies and diagnostics. The research involved comparing the complete genome sequences of 7,491 patients admitted to 224 intensive care units in the U.K. against those of 48,400 participants in Genomics England’s 100,000 Genomes project, and of a further 1,630 people who had mild COVID-19. While some of the gene variants found in the Genomicc study affect the function of a protein, others influence the amount of the protein that is expressed. An example is mucin-1, where overexpression led to worse outcomes.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Breg, Calyx, Clinchoice, J2 Medical, Oncimmune, Premier, Tytocare.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Circa Scientific, KSL Diagnostics, SQI Diagnostics.
LONDON – The U.K. Recovery trial has added a fourth drug to the list of therapies it has shown are effective in treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients, demonstrating the JAK inhibitor Olumiant (baricitinib) reduces the risk of death by 13% in seriously ill patients. That effect is in addition to treatment with dexamethasone, which became standard of care after the Recovery trial showed it reduced mortality by one-third in patients on ventilators.
Two years ago, BioWorld reported on 30 therapeutics and vaccines in development for COVID-19, about 3,000 people had died from the disease, and societal lockdowns began. Today, therapeutics and vaccines have ballooned to 1,048, deaths are at 6 million, and the world remains on edge due to highly transmissible variants and breakthrough infections. One thing remains the same: Scientists still do not know where the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Chromacode, Dyad Medical, Medtronic.
LONDON – Oxford University spinout Oxdx Ltd. has raised £2.6 million (US$3.6 million) in pre-seed funding to advance development of a technology for directly identifying infectious pathogens without the need to purify, culture or amplify samples first. The instant testing method uses a mixture of a single universal reagent, high resolution microscopy and machine learning, to identify specific species and strains of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens within minutes.
It's neither a retrovirus nor an opportunistic infection. But of course, SARS-CoV-2 has a prominent place at the table at the 2022 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) –
starting with the fact that COVID-19 has again forced the conference to go virtual.
The overwhelming focus of research into the cellular immune response to SARS-CoV-2 has been investigating the reaction of vaccinated people, in an effort to establish correlates of protection required to fight off infection. But with a majority in many African and Asian countries still unvaccinated, it also is important to understand the natural cellular immune response, and to track the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with the potential to escape immunity in these populations.
