BEIJING – Androgen receptor (AR) antagonist developer Kintor Pharmaceutical Ltd., of Suzhou, China, is going to provide its proxalutamide (GT-0918) to an ongoing clinical trial in male patients, led by U.S. firm Applied Biology Inc., in Brazil for COVID-19, after preliminary clinical research suggested a potential link between androgenetic alopecia and COVID-19 pathogenesis.
If there’s a readily visible upside to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be that telehealth is not only much more accessible, it’s also supremely topical among policymakers. However, privacy concerns are still a significant source of drag in some respects, a consideration that extends to digital medicine as well in the context of contact tracing used to corral the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: 3D Medical, Apollo Med Innovations, Aytu Bioscience, Beroni Group, Biosig Technologies, Bruker, EfficacyAI, Forsitech, Health Catalyst, Healthfinch, Inscopix, Medmira, Quantzig, Standard Capital, Todos Medical, Webbdx.
New England Biolabs Inc. (NEB) has launched its research use only product that can be utilized for the detection of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 RNA. It is intended to serve as an alternative to RT-qPCR, enabling visual detection of amplification of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid in half an hour.
CAJICA, Colombia, and BEIJING – Last week Sinovac Biotech Ltd., of Beijing, announced the approval by Anvisa, the Brazilian health care surveillance agency, to start phase III trials to test the efficacy and safety of its inactivated COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Sinovac Life Sciences, a subsidiary of the Chinese company, in the Latin American country.
The use of real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) in regulatory decision-making may seem more aspirational than practical at times, but that state of affairs is changing rapidly. Wendy Rubenstein, director of personalized medicine at the U.S. FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said contemporary versions of these real-world sources of evidence “are of progressively higher quality” in recent years, and thus RWE and RWD may soon hit their strides as mature sources of data with which regulators are increasingly comfortable.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Baxter International, Diazyme, Infervision, Therapixel.
DUBLIN – Osivax SAS has assembled a public funding package of more than €32 million (US$36.3 million) to pursue ongoing clinical development of its universal flu vaccine and to take forward a coronavirus vaccine program based on a similar approach, involving vaccine-like particle (VLP) technology.
The U.S. FDA’s priorities for testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus have shifted as circumstances have changed, and the agency is putting more emphasis into testing of pooled samples. Toby Lowe, the associate director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health (OIR), said on the July 8 diagnostic town hall that the agency wants to encourage test developers to work on their existing EUAs for pooled sampling.
