TORONTO – “With COVID-19 it’s not been an easy time to raise capital.” In virtually the same breath Joshua Liu, CEO of Toronto-based health-tech startup SeamlessMD Inc. credited the pandemic with nudging investors to spend CA$4 million (US$3 million) to grow his company’s cloud-based patient engagement app, boosting a library of digital plans for surgery, cancer and chronic care and adding machine learning-based risk prediction to remote patient monitoring.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Axim Biotechnologies, Baxter International, BioIQ, Biomérieux, Care G.B., Corza Health, General Biologicals, Invotek, Labcorp, Mediwound, Medtronic, Myomo, Nanox, Opgen, Pacgen, Pathogenx, PhysIQ, Premier, Solutions in Critical Care, Takeda, Tempus, Todos, Varian, Vibrent Health, Vitalconnect, Vivera.
A new randomized controlled trial (RCT) of COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) treatment for moderately ill COVID-19 patients run at 39 Indian hospitals found no association between CCP therapy and reduced mortality or progression to severe disease.
CAJICA, Colombia – Latin American countries are rushing to sign deals to gain access to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, with Brazil, the largest in the region, right in the race. Already, the country has the third most COVID-19 cases globally, behind only India and the U.S.
LONDON – The EU is to set up an equivalent to the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), after coming under criticism from pharma companies about Europe’s inability to swiftly seal advance purchase agreements for COVID-19 vaccines. The plan was announced on Sept. 16 by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in her first state of the union address since coming into office at the start of 2020. The new agency will support capacity and readiness to respond to cross-border health threats and emergencies, “whether of natural or deliberate origin,” she said.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: AVM, Cura, Mateon, Mediwound, Orphazyme.
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Adrenomed, Aim Immunotech, Algernon, Arcutis, Arena, Arrowhead, Aveo, Eli Lilly, Exicure, Galera, Genelux, Heron, Horizon, Immune-Onc, Knopp, Menarini, Ryvu, Springworks, Verastem, Verona.
Siemens Healthineers AG snagged a key role in the mystery playing out across the world's pandemic stage – what do antibody test results mean in terms of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and how do different tests assessing different proteins compare? The U.S. CDC and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission tapped the Erlanger, Germany-based company to take the lead in developing a process to standardize antibody assays.
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