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Early reports of the COVID-19 pandemic, created an initial widespread impression that children were not severely affected by the virus. This understanding was framed by data from China which showed that less than 1 percent of cases occurred in children younger than 10. However, this consensus is now being challenged by new reports, including one in the New England Journal of Medicine from Wuhan Children’s Hospital, which found a pediatric infection rate of more than 12 percent.

About 48 hours after a Seattle woman received the first dose of an experimental vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, scientists in China—not to be outdone—announced that they had regulatory approval to launch an ambitious vaccine trial as well. The Seattle volunteer received a messenger RNA vaccine that Moderna Therapeutics developed to prevent infection with the pandemic virus. The Chinese scientists, representing CanSino Biologics, described their plans to evaluate a recombinant vaccine.

Lauren Gardner, an associate engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, was sitting in a school coffee shop with two graduate students in January, chatting about their work on measles, Dengue fever and the Zika virus, when conversation turned to an emerging coronavirus in China.

BALTIMORE, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Pumas-AI, a University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) startup company, has been granted worldwide, exclusive rights to Lyv, a cutting-edge clinical decision support system designed to help health care professionals personalize treatment trajectories for patients in real-time.

The Lyv platform leverages clinical research and Electronic Health Record (EHR) data from millions of patients to derive algorithms that can personalize health care delivery. Lyv will have modules for anti-infectives, anti-epileptics, anti-coagulants, and anti-cancer that can be used in a hospital setting, and can also incorporate algorithms during new drug development. By personalizing treatment, Lyv can help improve therapeutic success rates and minimize dosing errors.

Last week, Abiomed acquired Baltimore-based startup Breethe for its innovative respiratory device. Breethe is a startup out of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) that was founded by Bartley P. Griffith, MD, the Thomas E. and Alice Marie Hales Distinguished Professor in Transplant Surgery and director of the cardiac and lung transplant programs at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM).

Image: https://www.umaryland.edu

Intralytix Receives Multimillion-Dollar Clinical Trial Award From NIAID to Manage Shigella Infections in Humans

COLUMBIA, Md., May 4, 2020 Intralytix, Inc. announced today that it has received a multimillion-dollar grant (AI 148054) from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), for the clinical development of its bacteriophage therapy preparation for managing infections caused by the bacterial pathogen Shigella. Dr. Alexander Sulakvelidze, Executive Vice President of Intralytix and the Program Director of the multi-PI grant, commented, “We are very pleased to have this collaborative opportunity with NIAID.

Image: https://biobuzz.inloop.com

When VAST Data hit the hallmark of this era’s Silicon Valley start-up boom last month, a $1 billion so-called unicorn valuation, it didn’t come through a perfect pitch delivered in a venture capital firm’s conference room. Face-to-face interactions typically considered crucial to VC transactions have moved online as Covid-19 spreads, but for VAST the virtual meetings weren’t deal breakers.

Image: A man cleans up on the trading floor, following traders testing positive for Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 19, 2020. Lucas Jackson | Reuters