Virology / vaccines

GSK’s vaccine for the prevention of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) has been approved by the US FDA, the company has announced.  The approval of GSK’s Priorix in the US gives patients another option for being vaccinated against MMR. The vaccine is already licensed in over 100 countries and more than 800 million doses have been […]

A vaccine for a range of mosquito-borne viruses has received positive results from a Phase I clinical trial.  Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Vaccine Research Center (VRC) have developed a vaccine for eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV), western equine encephalitis virus (WEEV), and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV).  EEV, […]

Biotech company ReiThera is collaborating with contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) Exothera on a project to develop Covid-19 and HIV vaccines for low-and middle-income countries (LMIC). The collaboration will see the companies develop and deliver new low-cost vaccines based on ReiThera’s GRAd technology platform for LMICs in Africa. Exothera will scale-up the manufacturing process […]

This is the latest episode of the free DDW podcast, “Is customisation healthcare’s secret weapon?”. It covers two narrated articles written for Volume 22, Issue 3 – Summer 2021 of DDW.  The articles are called “Optimising vaccine production through customisation” and “Exploring iPSCs for individual and population health applications”.  In the first article, “Optimising vaccine […]

This is the latest episode of the free narrated DDW podcast, “Is customisation healthcare’s secret weapon?”. It covers two narrated articles written for Volume 22, Issue 3 – Summer 2021 of DDW. The articles are called “Optimising vaccine production through customisation” and “Exploring iPSCs for individual and population health applications”.  In the first article, “Optimising vaccine […]

New research from the International Longevity Centre (ILC) in London, UK, finds that social media advertising can be a cost-effective way of engaging older people in deprived communities with vaccination.  The approach  In the past, researchers found that older people are less likely to use social media than younger generations. As evidence suggests that younger […]

This most recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General examines the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccination programme in England up to the end of October 2021, focusing on events up to the end of October 2021 and assessing whether the programme is well placed to meet its objectives in full. The National Audit Office […]

Dr. Tom Knapman, Director of Strategic Brand at SCIEX, explains how bioconvergent advances will help to drive key health trends in the coming year. As we move into 2022, we will see more and more advances in bioconvergence – biological, physical, and computing technologies inspired by nature. We expect these top five trends to exemplify […]

In this white paper, brought to you by BioRad, hear from leading industry experts in the emerging field of cancer vaccines. The experts discuss: Challenges related to antigen and adjuvant selection Vaccine design Immune response improvement Future treatment options Download the white paper here.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the Biologics License Application (BLA) for Moderna’s Spikevax, an mRNA vaccine for prevention of Covid-19 in individuals 18 years of age and older.  Official comments   “Our Covid-19 vaccine has been administered to hundreds of millions of people around the world, protecting people from Covid-19 infection, hospitalisation […]

IAVI and Moderna have announced that first doses have been administered in a clinical trial of experimental HIV vaccine antigens at George Washington University (GWU) School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC.  The trial  The Phase I trial, IAVI G002, is designed to test the hypothesis that sequential administration of priming and boosting […]

Moderna has dosed the first participant in a Phase II study of the company’s Omicron-specific booster candidate (mRNA-1273.529). Additionally, Moderna announced the publication of neutralising antibody data against the Omicron variant six months following a booster dose in The New England Journal of Medicine.   The mRNA-1273.529 trial  This extension of an earlier study will evaluate the immunogenicity, safety, and reactogenicity of […]

Dr Pirkko Muhonen, Senior Field Application Scientist, Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, at Thermo Fisher Scientific, shares what’s next for RNA-based medicine post-pandemic with DDW. With SARS-CoV-2 circulating the globe and leading to over five million deaths worldwide1, all eyes are on the critical role messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines are playing in helping to fight the ongoing […]

A study sponsored by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, suggests that an additional dose of a Covid-19 vaccine is safe in adults who had previously received a full regimen of any of three Covid-19 vaccines granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) or approved by the Food […]

A third ‘booster’ dose of Covid-19 vaccine successfully raises antibody levels that neutralise the Omicron variant, according to laboratory findings from the Francis Crick Institute and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) UCLH Biomedical Research Centre, published as a Research letter in The Lancet.   The results  Researchers found that antibodies generated in people who had received only two doses of either the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine or […]

A study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has shown that an experimental immunotherapy can temporarily reprogramme patients’ immune cells to attack a specific target via only a single injection of mRNA, similar to the mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines.  Context  The researchers, whose work is published in Science, demonstrated the new approach with an […]