News Archive

Johns Hopkins University has been given $200,000 in federal funds to support its global COVID-19 tracker that has become the preeminent resource worldwide for tracking the spread of the coronavirus.

Democratic Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen and Democratic Representatives Dutch Ruppersberger and John P. Sarbanes said the federal funds will be disbursed through the National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research grant program. The federal coronavirus stimulus package, under the CARES Act, allocated $75 million to the foundation to fund efforts that prevent, prepare for and respond to the coronavirus, domestically or internationally.

BASEL: Roche Holding received emergency use approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an antibody test to help determine if people have ever been infected with the coronavirus, the Swiss drugmaker said on Sunday (May 3).

Governments, businesses and individuals are seeking such blood tests, to help them learn more about who may have had the disease, who may have some immunity and to potentially craft strategies to end lockdowns that have battered global economies.

Beth Blauer and Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, two key members of the Johns Hopkins team that is tracking every confirmed coronavirus case, tell Brian Stelter how they do it, what the numbers do and don’t reveal, and why people can have confidence in the data, even though it is incomplete. With regards to the death toll, “we may see that the true number is actually larger than what’s been reported,” Nuzzo says, “not the other way around.”

Scientists at George Mason University are working to develop an easy-to-administer COVID-19 antibody test, which could mean using a simple swab in the mouth for saliva.

Dr. Lance Liotta works for the Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine Center at GMU. He said they’ve been working on saliva testing for many years and already had a collection device that would work.

“We thought let’s apply our expertise on that topic to that new challenge,” Liotta said.

Image: https://www.nbcwashington.com

The Association of University Research Parks (AURP), a global nonprofit membership organization serving the university and institutional research parks community, today announced its BIO Health Caucus will take place June 3-4, 2020 in a digital environment. AURP’s BIO Health Caucus represents anchor life science institutions building communities of health innovations in the U.S and around the world.

AURP’s 2020 BIO Health Caucus explores trends in life science research, opportunity zone funding, the marriage of life science and philanthropy, and finding funding for projects and facilities during a global pandemic. At this digital event, attendees will discover the role that biomedical clusters play in innovation ecosystems and translating discoveries from lab to market.

Image: Joel Marcus

The Association of University Research Parks (AURP), a global nonprofit membership organization serving the university and institutional research parks community, today announced its BIO Health Caucus will take place June 3-4, 2020 in a digital environment. AURP’s BIO Health Caucus represents anchor life science institutions building communities of health innovations in the U.S and around the world.

AURP’s 2020 BIO Health Caucus explores trends in life science research, opportunity zone funding, the marriage of life science and philanthropy, and finding funding for projects and facilities during a global pandemic. At this digital event, attendees will discover the role that biomedical clusters play in innovation ecosystems and translating discoveries from lab to market.

Image: Joel Marcus

Larry Hogan has got another of his ideas, and this one cracks him up. “I’m gonna call Pence!” says Hogan, startling his chief of staff, Matthew Clark, who sits across a large, round faux-wood table. Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, is meeting with his coronavirus command team, a skeleton crew of state officials still reporting to the capitol in Annapolis. The conference rooms are all too narrow, so they are gathered in a cavernous event room, seated in alternate chairs to maintain social distancing. Hogan, a ruddy 63-year-old with jug-handle ears, has in front of him a dispenser of hand sanitizer, a can of Diet Coke and a starfish-shaped conference-call speaker.

Image: https://governor.maryland.gov/governor-larry-hogan/

Sponsored by the Division of Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research, the StarTUp Accelerator supports student and local business ventures in an intensive eight-week, cohort-based fellowship where start-up businesses take residency and work in a collaborative space to accelerate their ventures. The inaugural cohort is a diverse group that includes two student-based ventures, a 100% halal-certified consumer cosmetics brand, a sports betting game from recent TU grads, and ventures from current TU faculty.

Sykesville, MD; March 13, 2020- Noble Life Sciences is excited to announce renewal of full accreditation from Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) International Council. Noble Life Sciences has held full AAALAC accreditation since October 10, 1989. Accredited contract research organizations (CROs) are re-evaluated every three years through an extensive internal review and on-site inspection conducted by members of AAALAC accreditation council and reviewed by the full council to determine accreditation status.

AstraZeneca will oversee global development, manufacturing, and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine candidate that was created by researchers at University of Oxford, and is now being studied in a human clinical trial launched last week, the partners said today.

AstraZeneca, the University, and its spinout company Vaccitech—which has joint rights to the platform technology behind the vaccine candidate, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19—said they will start work immediately while hammering out final terms of their collaboration agreement. The partnership is designed to enable rapid production and distribution of the vaccine should it prove effective in clinical studies.

Image: AstraZeneca will oversee global development, manufacturing, and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine candidate that was created by researchers at University of Oxford, and is now being studied in a human clinical trial launched last week. (University of Oxford)