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The European Commission wants to make health data easier to access by 2025 for patients, medics, regulators and researchers in a bid to improve diagnoses, cut unnecessary costs from duplication of medical tests and boost medicine research.

Pfizer Inc. on April 29 said a large trial found that the company’s COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid was not effective at preventing coronavirus infection in people living with someone infected with the virus.

PharmaLive talked to Gerald Martinetz at Mindbreeze regarding how data is transforming R&D in the metaverse.

Pfizer Inc. and the company’s partner BioNTech SE said on April 26 that they had submitted an application to the U.S. health regulator for the authorization of a booster dose of their COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years.

Gilead

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead Sciences’ antiviral therapy Veklury (remdesivir) as the first treatment for COVID-19 in young children.

Scientists from the United Kingdom may have identified several more environmental causes for cancer after evaluating the genetic data of over 12,000 cancer patients from National Health Service files. 

Valneva said on April 25 that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had asked for more data on the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, precipitating a sharp fall in the French drugmaker’s shares.

COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States for the second year in a row in 2021, with death rates rising for most age groups, a government study showed on April 22.

AbbVie

AbbVie terminated the company’s collaboration agreement with BioArctic in the development of alpha-synuclein antibodies for Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.

Arcturus Therapeutics announced positive Phase III trial results for the company’s mRNA vaccine candidate ARCT-154, which is intended to prevent COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.