The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022 was awarded to Svante Pääbo today "for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution." Pääbo, who is currently the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues overcame extreme technical challenges to sequence the DNA of ancient hominids – because after tens of thousands of years, there is no such thing as aging well for DNA.
Scientists from the University of Queensland have created a new antibiotic that can neutralize various gram-positive bacteria in mice, including major threats such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In a recent study, published in the Sept. 14, 2022, issue of Science Translational Medicine, the new compound outperformed the approved antibiotic vancomycin, and destroyed tough-to-eradicate bacterial biofilms while prompting a low rate of resistance.
From the beginning of the monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. in May, the federal government has bungled the response, according to both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
After nearly four decades as director of the U.S. NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 81-year-old Anthony Fauci will be stepping down in December. He also announced Aug. 22 that he will be handing over the reins as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation and as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
Rapid point-of-care (POC) diagnostics company Lumos Diagnostics Holdings Pty. Ltd. saw its stock plummet 65% on the news that the U.S. FDA rejected its Febridx 510(k) because the device was not substantially equivalent to the predicate device.
The U.S. FDA has rejected Verrica Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s drug-device combination to treat the viral skin disease molluscum for a third time, losing more ground to a potential rival from Novan Inc., because of continued manufacturing issues. There are no FDA-approved treatments for molluscum contagiosum, which leads to skin-colored or pink lesions and affects around 6 million people in the U.S. annually.
Royal Philips NV expanded its commitment to increasing awareness of cardiovascular implantable electronic device (CEID) infections with a new partnership with the American Heart Association (AHA). The organizations are rolling out a program to educate medical professionals on the proper management of these infections which are commonly treated with antibiotics, an approach that leads to reinfection in the majority of cases.
The world’s largest genomics study in patients with life-threatening COVID-19 infections has uncovered 16 new genetic variants associated with severe disease and drawn up a roadmap for research into new therapies and diagnostics. The research involved comparing the complete genome sequences of 7,491 patients admitted to 224 intensive care units in the U.K. against those of 48,400 participants in Genomics England’s 100,000 Genomes project, and of a further 1,630 people who had mild COVID-19. While some of the gene variants found in the Genomicc study affect the function of a protein, others influence the amount of the protein that is expressed. An example is mucin-1, where overexpression led to worse outcomes.
Selux Diagnostics Inc. raised $50 million in a series C financing to support the commercial launch of its next-generation phenotyping (NGP) rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing platform. RA Capital Management LLC led the round with participation from Sands Capital, Schooner Capital and Northpond Ventures, all returning investors.
LONDON – Oxford University spinout Oxdx Ltd. has raised £2.6 million (US$3.6 million) in pre-seed funding to advance development of a technology for directly identifying infectious pathogens without the need to purify, culture or amplify samples first. The instant testing method uses a mixture of a single universal reagent, high resolution microscopy and machine learning, to identify specific species and strains of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens within minutes.