Sparian Biosciences Inc. has been awarded a $19.5 million, 5-year grant to fund development of SBS-226 from IND submission through phase I development. SBS-226 is a first-in-class dual μ-opioid receptor partial agonist and δ-opioid receptor full antagonist in development for opiate use disorder and opiate withdrawal syndrome.

At the BioFuture 2024 conference held in New York in November, Seema Kumar, the CEO of Cure, described women’s health as something that has been directed at the “bikini area.” That “bikini” bias extended to both diseases and their causes – women’s health covered the breasts and reproductive system, and its causes were hormonal. Both concepts are far too narrow.

Epivario Inc. has been awarded a small business innovation research (SBIR) grant of $275,000 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to advance research toward the development of a novel epigenetic regulator as a treatment for opioid use disorder.

The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) at the NIH has awarded Resvita Bio a $2.03 million phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to advance RVB-003, a novel treatment for Netherton syndrome.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has established a pandemic preparedness research network to conduct research on high-priority pathogens most likely to threaten human health with the goal of developing effective vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.

Eydisbio Inc. has been awarded a $2.6 million phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to support its ongoing research into the efficacy of TAK1 inhibition in animal models of systemic sclerosis.

As mpox has now been found in the EU, the race for an effective vaccine has accelerated, with a study failure but increased vaccine production from Europe. The U.S. NIH just released top-line results from a preliminary analysis of a placebo-controlled study of Siga Technologies Inc.’s antiviral, tecovirimat, showing it missed the primary endpoint of statistically significant improvement within 28 days post-randomization in time to lesion resolution for patients in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health sponsored a study that was designed to establish whether there are any biomarkers that are strongly associated with the constellation of symptoms known as long COVID, but the study shed little light on the question.