Chris Newmarker

More than 20 biopharmaceutical companies around the world have pledged more than $1 billion toward the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund that launched today. Pledges include $100 million from Pfizer and $50 million from Boehringer Ingelheim. An initiative of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), the fund’s goal is to bring two to four…

Clinical research outfit Remington-Davis recently announced that it has launched a dedicated 3,000 ft2 space in Columbus, Ohio for COVID-19 clinical trials. The space includes six private overnight rooms, patient lounge, dedicated laboratory, oxygen therapy and more. Participants must be 18 or older with COVID-19 symptoms and have a laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV2 infection. “We were not…

Here are a few real estate and facility management strategies to help you get your pharma R&D lab up and running amid the COVID-19 pandemic, courtesy of commercial real estate outfit JLL. Roger Humphrey, JLL COVID-19 has unleashed a logistical conundrum for pharmaceutical leaders: How do you keep momentum in therapeutics development, when, like all…

Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BDX) announced today that it’s received an FDA emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 antigen test, which the company will start shipping this week. BD plans to ramp-up manufacturing capacity to 2 million tests per week by the end of September, with 10 million tests produced by the end of September. The tests run…

FDA expects that any COVID-19 vaccine it licenses should prevent the disease or decrease its severity in at least 50% of people vaccinated, according to guidance that the agency released today. The recommendation, which FDA said reflects the advice the agency has provided vaccine developers in recent months, was part of an overall document called…

FDA today announced that it has revoked its emergency use authorization allowing doctors to use the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19, citing concerns about the drugs’ efficacy against the virus. A large, randomized clinical trial in hospitalized patients found the malaria medicines showed no benefit for decreasing the likelihood of death or…

Q2 Solutions recently announced a partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific to use the Ion Torrent Genexus System — touted as the first fully integrated, next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform — to quickly and economically deliver clinical trial lab results. “Clinical trial oncology patients require lab testing before they can receive potential life-saving treatments, which makes lab…

Wladek Minor of the University of Virginia and other top structural biologists have created a Web resource so that scientists can track the progress of investigations into COVID-19 protein structures. The website also includes the research team’s assessment of the quality of the individual models. It includes enhanced versions of the protein structures when possible.…

Some alarm appears to be growing amid the rush to develop COVID-19 vaccines, with two prominent critics warning that politics could harm the process. In a New. York Times op-ed this week, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Dr. Paul A. Offit of the University of Pennsylvania worried that potential pressure to produce good news for…

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) announced today that its Janssen Pharmaceutical subsidiary has moved up first-in-human clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate to late July, versus the previously planned start in September. “Based on the strength of the preclinical data we have seen so far and interactions with the regulatory authorities, we have been able to…

New findings from an international research team suggest that neutralizing antibodies could have a use as a preventative treatment or as a post-exposure therapy against COVID-19. Their latest findings, which drew on data gathered from Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Advanced Light Source (ALS) — suggest that antibodies derived from SARS survivors could potentially block…

Thermo Fisher Scientific has added two mass spectrometers — the Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Exploris 240 and Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Exploris 120 — to its Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Exploris portfolio. The Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Exploris 240 mass spectrometer boasts the latest generation of system architecture and instrument control software to boost data acquisition and analysis capabilities for…

BioSig Technologies (Westport, Conn.) said today that its majority-owned ViralClear Pharmaceuticals subsidiary has secured FDA clearance for an Investigational New Drug application to use merimepodib to treat advanced COVID-19 cases. FDA told ViralClear that it may proceed with a phase II trial — a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of…

Too much bureaucracy often leaves corporate R&D departments hamstrung. It’s little wonder that biotechs were responsible for 38 of the 59 new therapies approved in 2018 compared with 21 for the big pharmaceutical companies, according to Biotechnology Innovation Organization research cited in a recent Harvard Business Review article. The authors of the HBR article were…

Pfizer and Valneva recently announced that they will collaborate on developing Valneva’s Lyme disease vaccine candidate VLA15, presently in Phase 2 clinical studies. Valneva is eligible to receive a total of $308 million, including $130 million upfront, according to an April 30 news release. Get the full story on our WTWH Media sister site R&D…

AI VIVO (Cambridge, UK) says it is looking for pharma and biotech companies interested in working on therapeutic candidates that its artificial intelligence has identified as “top-ranked” for COVID-19. The company says it has found that multiple groups around the world already are conducting clinical trials for 41 of the candidate drugs from its top-ranked…

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are using genetic resequencing tools to find ways to stop the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic. Biochemist Joe Schoeniger and virologist Oscar Negrete’s work involves genetically engineering a deployable antiviral countermeasure for COVID-19 using CRISPR-based technology. “The goal is to find new ‘reloadable’ countermeasures for viral outbreaks that do not…

International antibodies producer ProteoGenix recently announced what it touts as the first Human Immune COVID-19 library for the fast discovery of potent antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. “Highly sensitive and specific antibodies are critical for the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and prophylactics to fight against COVID-19,” said Philippe Funfrock, co-founder and president of ProteoGenix. “The new Human…

PerkinElmer recently announced that it has expanded its analysis and automation portfolio for quality, safety and content testing. The company geared the new offerings for pharmaceutical, semiconductor, biomonitoring, food, materials and academia labs. They’re supposed to help streamline workflows, sharpen insights and meet regulations. Go to our WTWH Media sister site R&D World for the…

The National Institutes of Health today announced the publishing of new COVID-19 treatment guidelines, and the expert panel producing the guidelines says no drug has yet been proven safe and effective against the virus. NIH has the new guidelines posted online at covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov — and says it will update the guidelines often as new peer-reviewed…

Sanofi and GSK recently announced that they have signed a letter of intent to collaborate on an adjuvanted vaccine for COVID-19 — with a goal of having the vaccine available by the second half of 2021. Sanofi is contributing its S-protein COVID-19 antigen. The company’s recombinant DNA technology produced an exact genetic match to proteins…

SP Scienceware is touting ProCulture, its new workflow-minded product line for cell culture under the company’s Bel-Art and Wilmad-LabGlass brands. ProCulture covers multiple steps of the cell culture process from isolation to harvesting, according to SP Scienceware. Products include an array of shaker flasks, spinner flasks with a unique impeller that increases aeration and eliminates…

Deciphering the key characteristics of the virus that causes COVID-19 and using experiments and computational methods to identify promising drug and vaccine candidates — those are but some of the efforts underway at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. The laboratory is also exploring options to help supply medical professionals…

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) said today that its Janssen Pharmaceutical Cos. has forged a partnership with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) to support coronavirus vaccine development. Janssen and the virology lab led by Dr. Dan Barouch at BIDMC have started preclinical testing of multiple vaccine prospects, with the goal of identifying a COVID-19…

Verily, Google’s life science’s sister company under Alphabet (NSDQ:GOOGL), has received an FDA 510(k) clearance to include an irregular pulse monitor in its Study Watch wearable. Pharmaceutical industry giants including Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer and Sanofi formed a strategic alliance with Verily last year to develop patient-centered clinical research programs using Verily’s Project Baseline evidence generation platform…