COVID-19 has disrupted science in the way it has disrupted everything else. In the short term, universities have largely closed shop as a way to maximize social distancing, and lots of science – or at least, lots of bench work – is not getting done.
HONG KONG – Another promising candidate has emerged in the race to find a treatment for the COVID-19 coronavirus. San Diego-based Ansun Biopharma Inc. released positive results from a four-patient study of its DAS-181 candidate, which is being developed for the treatment of severe COVID-19 infection.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Acumen Research Laboratories, Allurion Technologies, Almac Clinical Technologies, Artms Products, Beam Therapeutics, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Biotricity, Cure Pharmaceutical, Getinge, Imaginab, Invitae, Ivwatch, James Fisher, The Janz, Medipines, Mesa Biotech, Mirion, Nano-X, Oklahoma State University, Qure.ai, OGT, Parallax, Rapid Medical, United Global Alliance, Vortran, Xerox.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Cochlear, Genetron, Gnomegen, Motus GI, Nitiloop, Orthosensor.
Keeping you up to date on recent developments in oncology, including: Technetium crunch resurfaces as COVID-19 roils the globe; Microbiome changes precede tumor development in CRC; Il-27 proposed as target in prostate cancer.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: 3M, Boston Scientific, Gnomogen, Viracor Eurofins Clinical Diagnostics.
Pluristem Therapeutics Inc., an Israeli regenerative medicine company, said several of the seven COVID-19 patients treated with its allogeneic placental expanded (PLX) cells have progressed from suffering severe symptoms of the disease to signs of clinical recovery, including respiratory improvements.
“In any crisis, leaders have two equally important responsibilities: solve the immediate problem and keep it from happening again... The first point is more pressing, but the second has crucial long-term consequences.” So wrote Bill Gates in a February editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine about COVID-19, which “has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.”
As the demand increases for ventilators to treat Americans with severe symptoms of COVID-19, another shortage is being exacerbated – a shortage of the drugs needed to treat patients on ventilators.
LONDON – COVID-19 is posing a real threat to the viability of medical charities in the U.K., which collectively fund 17,000 scientists and invest more than £1.3 billion (US$1.6 billion) per annum in research.
