With increasing concerns about COVID-19 reinfection, Pfizer and the National Institutes of Health are discussing potential studies regarding a longer treatment period with the antiviral medication Paxlovid.
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R&D/Pipelines Report 2022: Innovating to turn the tide - The world’s leading COVID-19 vaccine and therapeutic manufacturers continue to develop treatments for the waves of variants as well as life-changing therapies for disease areas outside the world of coronaviruses. The world’s efforts to combat the global pandemic continue to evolve, as does Coronavirus Disease 2019 as variants and subvariants constantly toss volleys of grenades at the battlefront lines.
Reportedly, Pfizer is holding the company’s COVID-19 antiviral therapy Paxlovid under tight control. This is a disappointment to numerous investigators who want to test the antiviral combination therapy with other drugs in case the virus develops resistance to the combo.
Researchers at Hokkaido University in Japan, in a collaboration with American scientists, may have identified neural crosstalk as the mechanism that drives widespread inflammation in inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriasis and atherosclerosis.
In a peer-reviewed study published May 17 in PLOS Medicine, scientists found that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines were superior to adenovirus vector-based ones across major variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Diversity in all clinical research—including rare disease research—is currently under scrutiny, partly because of disparities experienced with COVID-19. Rightly so, as data show that 86 percent of genomics studies to date have involved people of European ancestry, which has limited the potential benefits of genomic research for many populations. Rebecca Sutphen, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of InformedDNA, and Board-Certified Genetic Counselor Karmen Trzupek analyze strategies to increase diversity in rare genetic disease trials.
Global biopharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt plc announced results of a retrospective, observational medical chart review subgroup analysis assessing real-world treatment outcomes among African Americans with advanced symptomatic sarcoidosis who initiated therapy with Acthar Gel (repository corticotropin injection).
Agios Pharmaceuticals is cutting the company’s staff numbers by 50 as part of plans to lay low on exploratory research efforts to focus on the success of late-stage initiatives.
Two life sciences powerhouses are coming together to develop an off-the-shelf beta cell replacement therapy for insulin-dependent diabetes patients, which they hope will become a functional cure for both types of the disease.
AstraZeneca moved to bolster the company’s COVID-19 portfolio of antibodies on May 17 with a $157 million licensing deal for experimental therapies developed by newly launched biotech RQ Bio.
A chain of events possibly triggered by unrecognized infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus could be causing the mysterious cases of severe hepatitis reported in hundreds of young children around the world, researchers suggest.