Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp. is looking to lessons from tuberculosis and smallpox to guide its future in infectious diseases. The company is developing an intradermal skin test like that used for TB to measure T-cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It also has three vaccines in development for COVID-19 that rely on horsepox, likely the form of vaccinia used by Edward Jenner to create the smallpox vaccine.
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee needed two days of hearings to get through a spending measure that provided the FDA with $500 million for its part in the government response. The CDC would receive $7.5 billion for vaccine distribution and tracking, all developments that ran parallel to an announcement that another 200 million doses of vaccine will be delivered by the end of July at a cost of $3.7 billion.
COLOMBIA – South Korea’s molecular diagnostics firm Seegene Inc. is expanding operations in the Brazilian market after Anvisa, the country's health care surveillance agency, cleared its multi-assay product through a COVID-19 emergency pathway. Seegene manufactures Allplex, a SARS-CoV-2/FluA/FluB/RSV test able to screen and differentiate eight targets.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Becton Dickinson.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Aziyo Biologics, Blackrock Microsystems, Clearpoint Neuro, Dexcom, Falcon, Mallinckrodt, Mrs Allergy, Nex Cubed, Picosun Oy, Sharecare, Spineway.
Keeping you up to date on recent developments in neurology, including: Understanding ‘brain fog’ in people with COVID-19; AD diagnostics could become more accessible; Careful with that BBB.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Curevac, Immunitybio, Lysogene, Nantkwest, Regeneron, Seagen, Xeris.
Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Amgen, Apollomics, Aqualung, Biontech, Généthon, Moderna, Pfizer, Regeneron, Sanofi, Tyg, Whitelab.
Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (Labcorp) reported its financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2020, which included a jump in revenues of 52%, a result enabled in part by its quick response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Labcorp said that revenues related to pandemic testing could decline by anywhere from 35% to 50% over the course of calendar year 2021.
Governments across the globe are struggling to keep pace with the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s impact on public health, but the new variants are presenting their own challenges. The next task facing governments across the globe is to sequence the latest mutated variants of the virus and keep track of any further mutations, all while validating new and revamped existing tests, a task that is likely to prove difficult to meet for at least the next few months.
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