South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety approved Moderna Inc.’s Spikevax LP.8.1 vaccine as an updated shot for COVID-19 targeting the LP.8.1 variant, according to Moderna Korea’s announcement Sept. 1. The regulatory clearance comes days after the U.S. FDA accepted, on Aug. 27, Moderna’s supplemental BLAs for two of its COVID-19 vaccines, Spikevax and Mnexspike.
French vaccines specialist Osivax SAS has been awarded $19.5 million by the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to fund work on its universal influenza A vaccine.
Worrisome new signals caused the U.S. FDA – which earlier this month OK’d revised labeling for Valneva SE’s chikungunya virus vaccine Ixchiq – to suspend the product’s license altogether. Regulators pointed to four added reports of serious adverse events consistent with chikungunya-like illness, and told Valneva, of Saint Herblain, France, that the company must stop U.S. shipping and sales of the product. Shares (NASDAQ:VALN) closed Aug. 25 at $9.43, down $2.21, or 19%.
Deficiencies in interferon-stimulated gene 15 (ISG15), a protein that normally regulates the immune response, causes mild but persistent inflammation. However, its absence also provides an unexpected advantage by increasing resistance to viral infections. Inspired by this condition and using mRNA technology, scientists at Columbia University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a broad-spectrum antiviral platform.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a generative AI model that was able to generate novel antibiotic structures from either chemical fragments or de novo, starting from ammonia, methane, water or no starting point at all. In a study that was published online in Cell, the team tested two dozen of more than 10 million structures that were proposed as potential antibiotics by the model.
For more than 30 years, the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) worked together to harmonize their evidence-based vaccine schedules. Not anymore.
Avixgen Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Dx&Vx Co. Ltd., inked a $360 million license agreement with an unidentified U.S.-based biotechnology company, granting the latter rights to its advanced cell penetrating (ACP) peptide drug delivery platform.
CSL Ltd.’s stock tumbled 16.88% on the news that it plans to cut 3,000 jobs and to hive off its Seqirus vaccine unit in a cost-cutting measure to save more than $500 million per year over the next three years.
In the wake of a lawsuit from the anti-vaccine nonprofit group U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy founded, HHS is reviving a vaccine safety task force that’s been lifeless for nearly three decades.
The U.S. FDA has given a swift and full approval to Precigen Inc.’s gene therapy, Papzimeos (zopapogene imadenovec), for treating adults with recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP), a rare and chronic disease characterized by benign tumors in the respiratory tract.