Infectious disease-focused biopharma companies continued their rebound into year-end, with the BioWorld Infectious Disease Index finishing 2025 up 68.55% after standing at a collective 28.98% at the end of October. The rally underscores a sharp reversal from earlier in the year, when the index had declined 17.83% by the end of April before recovering to a 4.34% gain by July.
Stoked Bio Inc. has secured an exclusive global license from McMaster University for the patents covering enterololin, a promising narrow-spectrum antibiotic.
A week after catching Moderna Inc. and its investors off guard with a refuse-to-file letter, the U.S. FDA has reversed course on the company’s BLA submission seeking approval of seasonal influenza vaccine mRNA-1010, now agreeing to review the application and setting an assigned PDUFA date of Aug. 5, 2026.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is increasingly compromising the effectiveness of essential antibiotics, resulting in higher global mortality and morbidity rates. Despite this urgent need, few new antibiotics, particularly against gram-negative bacteria, are in development.
Chikungunya virus is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus for which no antiviral therapy has been approved. Nucleotide analogues are among the most promising broad-spectrum antivirals, as they inhibit viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, an essential enzyme for RNA virus replication.
The use of DNA scaffolds could mark a turning point in HIV vaccine design. Scientists at Scripps Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a new vaccine platform based on DNA origami, a material that the immune system does not recognize as a threat, avoiding unwanted responses.
Moderna Inc. blamed a switcheroo by the U.S. FDA for the refusal-to-file (RTF) letter on the seasonal influenza vaccine mRNA-1010. Shares of the firm (NASDAQ:MRNA) closed Feb. 11 at $40.51, down $1.49, having traded as low as $36.66 as investors learned of the RTF letter, which Moderna said is “inconsistent with feedback” the company was given by regulators during pre-phase III as well as pre-BLA-submission talks.
Henipaviruses like Nipah (NiV) and Hendra (HeV) are highly lethal, bat-borne zoonotic viruses from the Paramyxoviridae family that cause severe encephalitis and respiratory illness in humans and animals. These viruses are highly transmissible and have notable pandemic potential. Researchers are actively screening and testing numerous small-molecule compounds as potential treatments for henipavirus infections. A team at the University of Illinois Chicago and collaborators used a high-throughput screening approach to identify a focused library of analogues.
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