Medical biotech company Emergent BioSolutions is one of the many health industry players turning its efforts towards addressing the current global coronavirus pandemic. Their work includes a two-pronged effort to pursue plasma-based treatments that could help lessen the impact of COVID-19 on health care systems, with a fast-tracked development timeline that could see human clinical trials start as soon as this summer.
The study of the COVID-19 pandemic often involves sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 virus using Illumina, Nanopore, IonTorrent and Sanger technologies alone or in combination. Depending on the sampling and library preparation method used, this can involve metatranscriptomic data of varying viral content.
In this webinar tutorial, the following topics will be discussed:
QIAGEN N.V. QGEN announced that it started shipping its new QIAstat-Dx Respiratory SARS-CoV-2 Panel test (which is to be sold as an in-vitro diagnostic or IVD) in the United States to help diagnose coronavirus-infected patients. The announcement came after a new policy of an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) was declared by the FDA early this month. Notably, the company will submit the related EUA to the FDA this week.
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Gentian Diagnostics AS is pleased to announce that the results from a study conducted in collaboration with University College of London (UCL) are published in Critical Care 2020, Meeting Abstracts from the 40th International Symposium on Intensive Care & Emergency Medicine. The results indicate that calprotectin can be used as an early biomarker for infection and inflammation. The study also shows earlier release of calprotectin compared to other conventional biomarkers (procalcitonin and C-reactive protein (CRP)). Early activation of immune response and recognition of bacterial infection and sepsis is a key step for early and correct initiation of antibiotic treatment. Calprotectin is released by neutrophils upon their activation and may thus act as an early biomarker of inflammation and bacterial infection.
When Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan decides to close nonessential businesses, bars and restaurants and limit public gatherings, he isn’t doing so all on his own.
Hogan has a team of seven public health specialists that he consults as he figures out how to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
Even without an official shelter-in-place order like a handful of other states have implemented, Maryland has some of the strictest rules across the nation to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Image: Dr. Linda Singh, interim executive director and CEO of TEDCO and a retired major general in the Maryland National Guard, is among the seven public health specialists Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan consults with regularly during the coronavirus pandemic. Here they talk in April 2018 at Aberdeen Proving Ground.(Kenneth K. Lam / Baltimore Sun)
Our team has served the BioHealth Capital Region for over a decade. In those efforts, we’ve also helped to shape and support the vibrant community we’re so proud to call home.
Over the course of recent weeks, communities have closed schools and businesses in the best interest of public health and safety. Rest assured that many companies in our region are working in unison to address Novel Coronavirus.
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As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing both the value and the need for public-private partnerships to quickly get much-needed medical innovations and technologies to combat infection in the hands of healthcare workers, patients and the general public. In collaboration with government authorities, private companies have stepped up to the plate to manufacture, with urgency, the diagnostic test kits required to identify those with infection. And others, like Johnson & Johnson, are working tirelessly with the aim to identify a vaccine to prevent future outbreaks.
The EIC is organising a special ePitching-session in the light of the current COVID-19 outbreak in an effort to mobilize EIC projects. All EIC-backed SMEs that can contribute to possible solutions to help combat the current pandemic and its consequences and are looking for investment are welcome to apply.
A limited number of EIC-backed up SMEs will then have the chance to show their innovative solutions via an online tool to a jury of investors, including Panakes Partners, Idacapital, Clinical Research Ventures, Monte Carlo Capital, Illumina Ventures, Capricorn Venture Partners, Diffusion Capital Partners on 15 April 2020 from 12.00 till 1.30 pm (CET).
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#/media/File:Novel_Coronavirus_SARS-CoV-2.jpg
Gaithersburg’s Novavax Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX) has been in the spotlight since January for its work on a novel coronavirus vaccine, but it will need more support to advance the program at the necessary speed, its head of research said Monday.
The Maryland biotech is now moving toward a phase 1 clinical trial after pulling in support from local players.
Two months after it started, “we’re very clearly confident that we can make a vaccine,” said Dr. Gregory Glenn, its president of research and development.
GAITHERSBURG, Md., March 24, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX), a late-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation vaccines for serious infectious diseases, today announced positive top-line results of its pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial of NanoFlu™, its recombinant quadrivalent seasonal influenza vaccine candidate with its proprietary Matrix-M™ adjuvant, in adults aged 65 and older. Using the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) criteria for accelerated approval of seasonal influenza vaccines, the trial evaluated the immunogenicity and safety of NanoFlu compared to Fluzone® Quadrivalent, a U.S.-licensed quadrivalent influenza vaccine.
