LONDON – Pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers working on COVID-19 vaccines are being targeted by Russian state-sponsored hackers, according to the U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The U.K. view is endorsed by the U.S. National Security Agency and Canada’s Communications Security Establishment, and the three agencies have issued a joint statement advising companies how to protect against these attacks.

In its first fully virtual markup session, the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday set aside politics to approve a bill that would make the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) a better emergency resource – at least for the next few years.

An editorial yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) marveled that “the world has now witnessed the compression of six years of work into six months,” and went on to ask the question that’s on everyone’s pandemic-wrenched mind: “Can the vaccine multiverse do it again, leading to a reality of a safe, efficacious COVID-19 vaccine for the most vulnerable in the next six [months]?”

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.

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.

Research focused on finding viable solutions to counter the COVID-19 pandemic continues at an explosive pace with a total of 588 potential therapeutics and vaccines at the forefront of scientific efforts launched by industry, academia and government.

Research focused on finding viable solutions to counter the COVID-19 pandemic continues at an explosive pace with a total of 588 potential therapeutics and vaccines at the forefront of scientific efforts launched by industry, academia and government.

The question of prices for a COVID-19 vaccine have raged in recent days. Gary Disbrow, acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), told members of a Senate committee that vaccines developed with the help of taxpayer funding will come with an appropriate reduction in price. However, CDC Director Robert Redfield emphasized that the cold-chain distribution system for those products requires the same kind of at-risk investment that is used for vaccine development.

LONDON – Biontech SE announced positive preliminary data from the ongoing phase I/II trial of one of the four COVID-19 vaccines it is developing with Pfizer Inc., with participants in each of three dose groups mounting immune responses that were greater than seen in patients who recovered from COVID-19 infections.

CAJICA, Colombia – Aided by federal funds from the Brazilian government, the University of Sao Paulo is moving forward with developing a precision SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that is about to start preclinical trials.