After nearly four decades as director of the U.S. NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 81-year-old Anthony Fauci will be stepping down in December. He also announced Aug. 22 that he will be handing over the reins as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation and as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.

The U.S. FDA has rejected Verrica Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s drug-device combination to treat the viral skin disease molluscum for a third time, losing more ground to a potential rival from Novan Inc., because of continued manufacturing issues. There are no FDA-approved treatments for molluscum contagiosum, which leads to skin-colored or pink lesions and affects around 6 million people in the U.S. annually.

Royal Philips NV expanded its commitment to increasing awareness of cardiovascular implantable electronic device (CEID) infections with a new partnership with the American Heart Association (AHA). The organizations are rolling out a program to educate medical professionals on the proper management of these infections which are commonly treated with antibiotics, an approach that leads to reinfection in the majority of cases.

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.

Selux Diagnostics Inc. raised $50 million in a series C financing to support the commercial launch of its next-generation phenotyping (NGP) rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing platform. RA Capital Management LLC led the round with participation from Sands Capital, Schooner Capital and Northpond Ventures, all returning investors.

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.

PARIS – Spartha Medical SAS reported an award of $2.7 million in grants with further, undisclosed equity financing from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, a body run by the European Commission established to make direct equity investment in European Union companies. This fund will be used to initiate clinical evaluation of its multifunctional coating technique.

Molecular diagnostics could dramatically improve care for one of the most common infections women face, vaginitis. A study by Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD) found that clinicians miss more than 45% of positive cases and misidentify an additional 12% of negative cases as positives when compared to diagnostic findings.

A team led by researchers from the ETH Zürich and the University of Basel has used a combination of mass spectrometry data and machine learning to predict antibiotic resistance of clinical bacterial samples. The results, which were published in the Jan. 10, 2022, issue of Nature Medicine, could speed the identification of optimal antibiotic regimens for patients.