Cytovale Inc. has posted a feverish run of wins lately. The company gained U.S. FDA clearance for its Intellisep rapid test for sepsis in January 2023, raised $84 million in a series C in November and just published results showing the test has negative predictive value of 97.5%.
Lyme disease, caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, is the leading tick-borne infection. Between 10% and 35% of patients show post-antibiotic treatment Lyme disease syndrome, with symptoms including fatigue, cognitive issues, memory loss, neuropathy, joint pain, musculoskeletal pain, sleep issues, depression and others.
There is still a need for developing more potent and broadly neutralizing vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 with improved durability. At the recent ESCMID meeting, Astrazeneca plc presented a new mRNA vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that encodes for self-assembling virus-like particle (VLP) antigens.
Novel HIV-1 vaccine strategies should elicit potent and broad immunity against the viral envelope (Env) glycoprotein. Particle presentation of Env has shown promise in animal studies, but has several problems that limit their clinical application.
Gilead Sciences Inc. has patented 4'-Thionucleoside analogues acting as viral replication inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of HIV infection.
Tocris Cookson Ltd., Helmholtz Zentrum fur Infektionsforschung GmbH and University of Lübeck have described proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) comprising cereblon (CRBN) ligands covalently bonded to non-structural protein 3 (nsp3; PL-PRO) (SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19 virus) targeting moiety through linker reported to be useful for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19).
Researchers from Tan Tock Seng Hospital presented data from a study investigating the utility of soluble suppressor of tumorigenicity-2 (sST2) as early prognostic biomarker of severe dengue.
Vedanta Biosciences Inc. has been awarded $3.9 million in funding from the Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) to advance its VE-707 preclinical development program for reducing colonization and preventing subsequent infections caused by multidrug-resistant organisms (MRDOs).
Current approved antifungal therapies are limited by their associated adverse events. SCY-247 is a new triterpenoid antifungal for intravenous or oral administration that inhibits the glucan synthase enzyme, which is a key member for the fungal cell wall.