News Archive

Massachusetts General Hospital and MIT have formed a $3 million strategic alliance in an attempt to address three “major challenges” that persist in healthcare: improving diagnoses, developing new approaches to prevent and treat infectious diseases and developing more accurate methods of diagnosing and treating neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases.

The alliance, officials said, will add further heft to already existing efforts between individual collaborations between the two institutions, particularly as they relate to development of diagnostic tools and therapies.

The U.S. government invested $440 million in three vaccine plants in the U.S. in 2012 with the proviso that if something like a pandemic occurred, it could call on them to produce drugs that it required. With Ebola spreading, those calls have now been made.

The Ebola crisis has prompted the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to ask the three plant owners–Novartis ($NVS), GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) and Emergent Biosolutions ($EBS) and their partners–to tell it what it would take for them to produce ZMapp, an experimental drug currently being produced through a novel approach using tobacco plants. BARDA wants detailed timetables and budgets for making ZMapp, Reuters reports. They are supposed to respond by Nov. 10.

Italian drugmaker Sigma-Tau is in advanced talks to sell part of its Italian operations to domestic peer Alfa Wassermann that would create an over-the-counter (OTC) powerhouse, several sources familiar with the situation said.

Sigma-Tau is working with Milan-based Four Partners, an advisory firm led by Sigma board member Guido Tugnoli, said the sources, who declined to be identified because the matter is private.

NewLink Genetics Corp (NLNK.O) said it entered into an agreement with Roche Holding AG (ROG.VX) to develop NewLink’s cancer immunotherapy, making the Ebola vaccine developer eligible to receive over $1 billion in milestone payments.

NewLink’s shares jumped nearly 30 percent before the bell on Monday.

Biopharmaceutical company Emergent BioSolutions could begin manufacturing an experimental Ebola drug at its Baltimore facility.

Rockville-based Emergent is one of three advanced laboratories asked by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to submit a plan for manufacturing ZMapp. The drug has been used among infected health workers in Africa but supplies have run out. BARDA will select one or more of the labs to make more of the drug.

ATCC, the premier global biological materials resource and standards organization, announces the release of ATCC® Minis to support quality control (QC) testing in pharmaceutical and industrial labs, during the PDA 9th Annual Global Conference on Pharmaceutical Microbiology in Bethesda, MD, Booth # 304.

Healthcare, personal care product, and cosmetic manufacturers are required to test the bio-burden and sterility of their products and production environments to ensure consumer safety. Global alignment and harmonization of microbial testing requirements among the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), Japanese Pharmacopeia (JP), and European Pharmacopeia (EP), have resulted in the need for consistent and reliable control organisms at less than five passages from the ATCC reference stock for reproducible results.

A BIOTECHNOLOGY company founded by Limerick man Kieran Curran has been snapped up for $150m by a US firm.

GenCell Biosystems, a company based in Raheen with offices in the US, was acquired late last week by Becton Dickinson, a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

One of the two Ebola-infected Dallas nurses was admitted to a National Institutes of Health biocontainment unit in Bethesda on Thursday, just as researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore are beginning the first human trials of an Ebola vaccine in Africa.

Dr. Myron Levine, a researcher at the medical school, is a member of the international medical group leading the efforts to end the outbreak. Ebola has infected more than 8,000 people since the first reported case in March, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.