GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, has announced that it will freeze the prices of its vaccines for five years for developing countries that graduate from GAVI Alliance support.
By committing to offer GAVI Alliance prices for vaccines against pneumonia, diarrhoea and cervical cancer, GSK will support developing country governments as they transition to financing the full cost of their local vaccination programmes.
A candidate Ebola vaccine could be given to healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom, The Gambia, and Mali as early as September, as part of a series of safety trials of potential vaccines aimed at preventing the disease that has killed more than 1,400 people in the current outbreak in West Africa.
Human trials of this candidate vaccine, being co-developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), are to be accelerated with funding from an international consortium in response to the Ebola epidemic, which the World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared a public health emergency of international concern.
GlaxoSmithKline’s experimental Ebola vaccine could be tested on humans in the UK, US, the Gambia and Mali in the next few weeks, in a race to contain the deadly virus that has claimed more than 1,500 lives in west Africa.
The news came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the Ebola epidemic could eventually exceed 20,000 cases. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s assistant director-general for emergency operations, said: “This far outstrips any historic Ebola outbreak in numbers. The largest outbreak in the past was about 400 cases.”
Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi are using IBM Watson’s computer brain/big data cruncher to support research and development. It will be used to identify new applications for drugs that have already been developed and to leaf through scientific papers that detail clinical trial outcomes, according to a statement from IBM. The partnerships follow a new development in Watson’s evolution that help it visually uncover patterns and pinpoint connections in related data to accelerate the discovery process and advance science research.
“Watson now has the ability to understand the language of chemistry, biology, legal and intellectual property, giving scientists the ability to make connections with data that others don’t see, which can lead to rapid breakthrough in discoveries,” the statement said.
Every day our DNA breaks a little. Special enzymes keep our genome intact while we’re alive, but after death, once the oxygen runs out, there is no more repair. Chemical damage accumulates, and decomposition brings its own kind of collapse: membranes dissolve, enzymes leak, and bacteria multiply. How long until DNA disappears altogether? Since the delicate molecule was discovered, most scientists had assumed that the DNA of the dead was rapidly and irretrievably lost. When Svante Pääbo, now the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, first considered the question more than three decades ago, he dared to wonder if it might last beyond a few days or weeks. But Pääbo and other scientists have now shown that if only a few of the trillions of cells in a body escape destruction, a genome may survive for tens of thousands of years.
The crossover round is alive and well. Just a few days after Dermira put out the word that a consortium of backers had come up with a $51 million C round, the company rolled out a $75 million IPO. And the news, along with a fresh, $86 million filing from Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, helps set the stage for a new round of fall biotech IPOs that will once again test investors’ appetite for risk.
First, let’s look at Redwood City, CA-based Dermira. Focused on skin ailments, the biotech is partnered with UCB on the development of Cimzia–already on the market–for psoriasis, a field that will soon be packed with a host of contenders from the likes of Novartis ($NVS) and Eli Lilly ($LLY). The biotech has laid plans for a Phase III psoriasis trial in 2015 as it pursues further work on a new therapy for “hyperhidrosis,” or excessive sweating, in the armpits. It’s in a Phase IIb study and a successful outcome would set the stage for a late-stage program. There’s also an acne treatment in early mid-stage studies.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Thursday appointed six new members to the Baltimore Development Corp. board, an announcement that comes as Councilman Bill Cole takes over as president of the agency.
The six new members are mostly long-standing vacancies on the 19-member board. One of the appointments fills a seat opened after city Finance Director Harry Black announced last month that he was leaving his job to become city manager in Cincinnati.
Scientists who use government money to conduct genomic research will now be required to quickly share the data they gather under a policy announced on Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health.
The data-sharing policy, which will take effect with grants awarded in January, will give agency-financed researchers six months to load any genomic data they collect—from human or nonhuman subjects—into a government-established database or a recognized alternative.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today that it will provide a multi-million dollar grant to create a hub of innovation that unites public and private institutions throughout Southern California, headquartered at and administered by the University of Southern California, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of California Los Angeles.
The new center is part of the NSF Innovation Corps, or “I-Corps,” initiative, which is aimed at fostering innovation throughout the U.S. by encouraging the translation of ideas and research beyond the laboratory to create social and economic impact. The announcement cements the position of Southern California as a crucial focal point of technology entrepreneurship in the country.
