National Institutes of Health

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) this week announced four new grants to establish tuberculosis research centers in the U.S. The NIAID, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), issued four new grant awards to establish Tuberculosis Research Advancement Centers (TRAC) to support the development of the next generation…

Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) has sent a letter to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) asking for a status update regarding ongoing research to develop a universal COVID-19 vaccine. NIAID had awarded $36.3 million to academic institutions to working on coronavirus vaccines that potentially protect against multiple types of coronaviruses. Coronavirus…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a study to gauge the antibody response of a third dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in patients with autoimmune disease. Participants in the study had an insufficient immune response to the primary series of vaccination. The Phase 2 study will also test the impact of pausing immunosuppressive…

Health experts remain divided over the need for COVID-19 vaccine boosters in the coming months, but the U.S. government is preparing for that possibility by purchasing 200 million additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA). The purchase of additional doses will also enable the U.S. government to inoculate children aged 12 to 17…

The investigational drug Tempol from Adamis Pharmaceuticals Corp. (NSDQ:ADMP) could be a potent oral antiviral treatment for COVID-19 based on cell culture research, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  The positive research news caused Adamis Pharmaceuticals’ stock to jump 61% from $0.69 to $1.13 today. The quick jump in its stock valuation triggered…

The pharmaceutical industry launched a herculean effort to battle the COVID-19 pandemic early in 2020, developing an array of vaccines and other therapeutics while also identifying existing drugs suitable for treating patients sick with severe coronavirus infections. FDA recently granted emergency authorization to two SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and several other treatments. Here are 11 of the…

President Trump unveiled his latest executive order, which aims to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to American citizens before sending them abroad.  “It is the policy of the United States to ensure Americans have priority access to free, safe, and effective COVID-19 vaccines,” reads part of the order. After the HHS Secretary has determined that the U.S. public…

Until recently, the most rapidly developed vaccine was for mumps, which took four years. Now, Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) appear to be on the cusp of commercializing COVID-19 vaccines under emergency use authorization. It was only a year ago that physicians in China identified unusual pneumonia cases that would later be associated with the novel coronavirus. As impressive…

Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) is now the second company to release positive preliminary results from a Phase 3 trial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate — and it appears to be more good news. Last week, Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) announced that early data suggested its BNT162 mRNA-based vaccine was more than 90% effective at reducing symptomatic COVID-19 infections.  Today,…

The National Institutes of Health today launched a Phase 3 clinical trial to evaluate three immune modulator drugs in hospitalized adults with COVID-19. Some COVID-19 patients experience an immune response in which the immune system unleashes proteins that trigger inflammation, otherwise known as a cytokine storm, which can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome, multiple…

Five COVID-19 vaccine candidates are going through Phase 3 clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy. Researchers worldwide are testing 132 COVID-19 vaccine candidates, including 42 that are in clinical trials on humans and at least 92 in preclinical or animal trials, according to the New York Times. With the U.S. alone topping 200,000 COVID-19…

Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) announced today that it began dosing participants in the Phase 3 clinical study of its mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna’s COVE (coronavirus efficacy) study is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Biomedical Advanced Research…

Plakous Therapeutics announced that it received more than $1.7 million in a research grant from he Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Phase I-II fast-track small business innovation research (SBIR) grant, worth up to $1.725 million, is slated to help Plakous develop…

A new collaboration funded by in part by $1.1 million from the FDA is working on finding new uses for existing drugs for areas of high unmet medical need — with a pilot project focused on treatments for COVID-19. The Critical Path Institute (C-Path) this week announced the launch of the CURE Drug Repurposing Collaboratory…

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…

The National Institutes of Health and its foundation announced that, in collaboration with multiple biopharmaceutical companies and government agencies, they will develop an international strategy for coordinating research responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The collaboration includes the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the Centers for Disease Control…

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…

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…

A Phase 1 clinical trial for an investigational COVID-19 vaccine is underway at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. The open-label trial plans to enroll 45 healthy adults aged 18 to 55 years over a six week period. The first study participant received the vaccine yesterday. Researchers at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research…