In a bid to build public confidence and demonstrate its transparency in determinations about potential COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA will convene its Vaccine Advisory Committee for a virtual meeting Oct. 22 to discuss the general development of the vaccines for the U.S. market.

Without a doubt, efforts to fight COVID-19 have dominated the flow of money into the biopharma industry through nonprofit collaborations and grants, accounting for 87% and 85% of the 2020 totals, respectively. Out of the 590 bio/nonprofit deals tracked by BioWorld this year, a total of $7.18 billion has been recorded, but 283 deals valued at $6.24 billion are directly focused on providing therapies for the pandemic.

With COVID-19, questions about how infections cause lasting immunity, or don’t, and how you know and what it all means for vaccines have become a matter of public focus. But some immunologists have been pondering those questions for years. “The immune system has a very good memory,” Bali Pulendran told BioWorld. “Clearly, some viruses and some pathogens can enter the body and stimulate the immune system, and the immune system can remember that encounter for decades.”

LONDON – The U.K. is funding a national program of research to investigate the major unanswered questions related to the immune response to COVID-19. The aim of the research, involving teams of immunologists in 17 research institutions, is to unpick the immunological backdrop of one of the most notable aspects of COVID-19 infection, which is the huge spectrum of severity of symptoms.