COVID-19

Dr Patrick Courtney (SiLA consortium), Burkhard Schaefer (SiLA consortium/ASTM AnIML) and Oliver Peter, Senior Director, Senior Group Leader Biology Technologies and Lead Discovery, Biology, Idorsia Pharmaceuticals, look at the importance of automation in the face of global disease. As we write this, vaccines are being injected into arms at scale and pace in many countries […]

Scientists at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), in collaboration with the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS) and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), have published new data on how the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein interacts with mammalian lung cell membranes, allowing the viral RNA to enter human cells.  The purpose […]

Last year scientists from around the world undertook genetic analysis to uncover the genetic factors influencing why some Covid-19 patients develop severe, life-threatening disease requiring hospitalisation, while others escape with mild symptoms or none at all. A comprehensive summary of their findings to date, published in Nature, reveals 13 loci, or locations in the human […]

Lu Rahman looks at the growing role of real world evidence and its benefits in the fight against Covid-19. Real world evidence (RWE)  is nothing new. While clinical trials have a significant part to play  – and indeed remain the ultimate standard for advancing new drugs to markets – gathering observational data from clinical settings […]

Two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine induce lower levels of antibodies that are able to recognise and fight the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant (B.1.617.2) than against other strains. These laboratory findings from the Francis Crick Institute and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) UCLH Biomedical Research Centre are published as a Research letter in […]

CureVac has announced results of the second interim analysis of its international pivotal Phase IIb/III study in approximatively 40,000 subjects (the HERALD study) of CureVac’s first-generation Covid-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV. At second interim analysis, statistical success criteria were not met. In the unprecedented context of at least 13 variants circulating within the study population subset […]

New data from Public Health England (PHE) demonstrated AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine offers high levels of protection against the Delta variant (B.1.617.2; formerly the ‘Indian’ variant). Real world data from PHE, published as a pre-print, demonstrated two doses of AstraZeneca are 92% effective against hospitalisation due to the Delta variant and showed no deaths among those […]

The New York Times has reported that the Chairman of the Chinese drug maker Sinovac said China had approved the company’s Covid-19 vaccine for children as young as three, which the media outlet explains would make the country the first in the world to endorse a vaccine for children of this age. The World Health […]

Levels of antibodies in the blood of vaccinated people that can recognise and fight the new SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant first discovered in India (B.1.617.2) are on average lower than those against previously circulating variants in the UK, according to new laboratory data from the Francis Crick Institute and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) […]

University of Queensland scientists have successfully protected mice from the Covid-19 virus by administering a US-developed vaccine candidate with a ‘patch’, rather than a needle. The University of Texas Hexapro vaccine candidate, delivered via the UQ-developed and Vaxxas-commercialised high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP), provided protection against Covid-19 disease with a single, pain-free ‘click’ from a pocket-sized […]