Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Dompé, Mesoblast, Mustang, Oblato, Pharmacyte.
LONDON – New evidence from seven randomized controlled trials and a simultaneously conducted meta-analysis has again demonstrated that corticosteroids show significant benefit in patients who are critically ill with COVID-19, reducing length of hospital stay and cutting 28-day mortality.
TORONTO – Its Canadian medical device establishment licence now firmly in hand, Toronto-based Internet of Things Inc. (ITT) is set to launch a fever-detection system for identifying possible COVID-19 carriers at the entrances of airports, long term care facilities, schools and other places where people congregate. The Thermalpass is an AI-enabled, deep learning screening system that got its start as a road-related weather sensing system, today detecting elevated body temperature.
The idea of being able to produce vaccines at the point of care with the push of a button may sound futuristic, but Codex DNA Inc. claims it will have the first fully automated, tabletop vaccine printer ready for the market in 18-24 months. Will this be a game-changer in rolling out a COVID-19 vaccine? Probably not. But the technology could better position health officials to respond to the next pandemic, or eventually to produce a better, faster influenza vaccine each year.
NEW DELHI – A COVID-19 diagnostic test kit developed by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi is the latest to join a growing pool of low-cost kits domestically developed in a country where the number of cases topped 2 million in August and continues to rise. The push to develop test kits domestically is part of a national effort to shake off a heavy dependence on imports of medical devices, including diagnostic kits.