The FDA this afternoon issued an emergency use authorization for the investigational antiviral drug remdesivir to treat severely ill COVID-19 patients. The authorization for the drug, made by Gilead Sciences’ (NSDQ:GILD), will allow both adults and children to be treated with the remdesivir, the first drug believed to have any effect on the virus that has sickened…
Fauci: Hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses could be ready in January
Dr. Anthony Fauci said this morning that hundreds of millions of doses of a vaccine for COVID-19 could be ready by January. In an interview on the Today Show, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that a vaccine candidate is in the first phase of a clinical trial. If the second…
Quest Diagnostics launches patient-ordered COVID-19 antibody test
Quest Diagnostics (NYSE:DGX) announced today that consumers can now order a COVID-19 antibody test it launched last week directly from the company, without visiting a doctor’s office. The Secaucus, N.J.-based testing giant said consumers can purchase the antibody test service online for $119 through its QuestDirect business. They will be prompted to schedule an appointment…
Elemica branches out to pharma industry
Chemical industry digital supply chain company Elemica (Wayne, Pa.) said recently that it has extended its offerings to the pharmaceutical industry. Pharma companies using Elemica solutions will now benefit from improved collaboration, visibility, quality management, traceability and speed of execution across their global supply chains, according to Elemica. The company has been building digital solutions…
Redesign Science to use OpenEye Scientific software for drug development
Redesign Science and OpenEye Scientific announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership to integrate OpenEye’s Orion computational platform into Redesign’s drug-discovery platform. Santa Fe, N.M.-based OpenEye makes “cheminformatics” software for drug discovery, providing a reliable application programming interfaces (API) that customers use to build customizable programs and workflows. Its newly released Orion computational…
Mayo Clinic, W.L. Gore team up on stem cell therapy treatments
Mayo Clinic and W. L. Gore & Associates have announced a partnership to develop implantable cell therapies to treat debilitating conditions with no cure. The for-profit company, Avobis Bio, will combine a patient’s own stem cells with bioabsorbable scaffolds to stimulate the healing of perianal fistulas, painful tunneling wounds that affect patients with Crohn’s disease.…
Drug or device? FDA loses this argument for now
This article has been updated with comments from an attorney for Genus Medical Technologies. A federal judge has temporarily blocked an attempt by the FDA to regulate a barium sulfate product ingested before imaging as a drug. The decision counts as at least a partial win for Genus Medical Technologies (St. Louis), maker of the Vanilla SilQ line of…
‘Hubble Space Telescope’ for genomics could yield new drugs, materials to save species
Researchers in Spain have developed a new genomics tool that can classify how species are related to each other at far larger scales than previously possible and may yield new drugs, materials and foods — and pinpoint strategies for saving species at risk of extinction. Heralded as a “Hubble Space Telescope” of genomics, the technology…