Pandemic News and Research

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A pandemic is a global disease outbreak. During a pandemic, transmission can be anticipated in the workplace, not only from patient to workers in health care settings, but also among co-workers in general work settings. A pandemic would cause high levels of illness, death, social disruption, and economic loss. Everyday life would be disrupted because so many people in so many places become seriously ill at the same time. Impacts could range from school and business closings to the interruption of basic services such as public transportation and food delivery.

Two new groups of viruses discovered within Bunyavirus family in Ivory Coast tropical forest

Researchers at the University of Bonn and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) have discovered two new groups of viruses within the Bunyavirus family in the tropical forest of Ivory Coast. Previously only five groups responsible for serious illnesses in humans and animals were known.

2 Jun 2015

BiondVax provides update on financial results for first quarter 2015

BiondVax Pharmaceuticals Ltd., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing immunomodulation therapies for infectious diseases, today announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2015 and provided a business update.

1 Jun 2015

TB Alliance announces start of clinical trial to treat XDR-TB

TB Alliance and its partners announced the start of a clinical trial of a new regimen to treat extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). It is the first study to test an all-oral drug regimen, comprised of drugs with minimal pre-existing resistance, that has the potential to shorten, simplify, and improve treatment for XDR-TB.

14 May 2015

Soligenix, Emergent BioSolutions sign development agreement

Soligenix, Inc., a late-stage biopharmaceutical company developing products that address unmet medical needs in the areas of inflammation, oncology and biodefense, announced today that it has initiated a development agreement with Emergent BioSolutions to implement a commercially viable, scalable production technology for the RiVax drug substance protein antigen.

13 May 2015

European Investment Bank supports Bavarian Nordic’s development of Ebola and cancer vaccines

The European Investment Bank (EIB), the world’s largest multilateral bank, today reaffirmed its firm commitment to respond to the Ebola pandemic. The Bank has provided a EUR 50 million loan to Bavarian Nordic, an international biopharmaceutical company, for accelerated development of an Ebola vaccine with long-term efficacy. The financing is also backing research into vaccines for treating other infectious diseases and multiple cancer indications.

12 May 2015

BD reports revenues of $2.051 billion for second fiscal quarter 2015

BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), a leading global medical technology company, today reported quarterly revenues of $2.051 billion for the second fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2015, representing a decrease of 1.0 percent from the prior-year period, or an increase of 4.9 percent on a foreign currency-neutral basis.

From BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) 7 May 2015

NanoPass signs license agreement for supply of MicronJet600 device to Circassia

NanoPass Technologies Ltd., a pioneer in intradermal delivery solutions for vaccines, announced today that it has entered into a license agreement for the supply of MicronJet600, its microneedle delivery device, to Circassia Pharmaceuticals plc. (Oxford, UK), a specialty biopharmaceutical company focused on the allergy market.

6 May 2015

Texas Biomed scientists awarded NIH grant to develop potential HPV-based HIV vaccine

Scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute have begun work on a nearly $3.4 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health over the next four years to create an attenuated, or weakened, virus that is a hybrid of the papilloma virus and the human immunodeficiency virus, with the potential to jumpstart a body's immune response to develop antibodies against both viruses.

30 Apr 2015

SLU selected to work on universal flu vaccine project

Supported by a federal contract, Saint Louis University will study a concept for a universal flu vaccine that is designed to protect people from influenza pandemics that could turn deadly as well as seasonal flu caused by the influenza A virus.

29 Apr 2015

Lab-on-paper technique could help detect low quality antimalarial drugs

Access to high-quality medicine is a basic human right, but over four billion people live in countries where many medications are substandard or fake. Marya Lieberman of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame and Abigail Weaver a postdoctoral associate in the University's Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Earth Sciences took up the challenge of how people in developing countries could detect low quality antimalarial drugs without expensive equipment and without handling dangerous chemicals.

21 Apr 2015

UC San Diego study examines counterfeit drug penetration in global medicine supply chains

When you take a medication for, say, high cholesterol, do you know that pill is really what the label says it is? Depending upon the type of medicine and where you live, the threat of falsified medications (also referred to as counterfeit, fraudulent, and substandard) can be quite real, yet the full scope and prevalence of the problem is poorly understood, say researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in a new report published April 20 in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

21 Apr 2015

Many people still underestimate health risks associated with smoking few cigarettes a day

Many people still dangerously underestimate the health risks associated with smoking even a few cigarettes a day, despite decades of public health campaigning, French researchers have reported at the European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) in Geneva, Switzerland.

20 Apr 2015

UofL-led study focuses on flu vaccine for children with neurological disorders

Children who have neurological disorders such as cerebral palsy or epilepsy are no more likely to be vaccinated against influenza than youngsters without these conditions, despite the increased risk for complications from flu these children experience.

10 Apr 2015

Top scientists to attend 3rd annual Helmholtz-Nature Medicine Diabetes Conference

As a unique scientific panel it brings together top scientists as well as promising young researchers from different disciplines in a personal and selected ambience.

26 Mar 2015

Discovery opens door to possible new ways to break transmission cycle of schistosomiasis

Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered a group of genes in one species of snail that provide a natural resistance to the flatworm parasite that causes schistosomiasis, and opens the door to possible new drugs or ways to break the transmission cycle of this debilitating disease.

25 Mar 2015

EMA approves Baylor's hollow fiber system for development of TB drugs

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has approved the use of the hollow fiber system for the development of drugs to treat and prevent tuberculosis (TB).

24 Mar 2015

Experts call for a tobacco-free world by 2040

Leading public health researchers have called for the sale of tobacco to be phased out by 2040, showing that with sufficient political support and stronger evidence-based action against the tobacco industry, a tobacco-free world – where less than 5% of adults use tobacco – could be possible in less than three decades.

16 Mar 2015

GHTC report confronts key challenge of renewing US leadership in global health technology

Today, the world is looking to the United States for cutting-edge diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines that could have the last word on an Ebola outbreak that is down but not out. But those innovations are the product of past US investments in research and development (R&D).

13 Mar 2015

New antibody provides 100% protection against H5N1 influenza virus in animal models

Since 2003, the H5N1 influenza virus, more commonly known as the bird flu, has been responsible for the deaths of millions of chickens and ducks and has infected more than 650 people, leading to a 60 percent mortality rate for the latter. Luckily, this virus has yet to achieve human-to-human transmission, but a small number of mutations could change that, resulting in a pandemic.

4 Mar 2015

Scientists find gorilla origins in two human AIDS virus lineages

Two of the four known groups of human AIDS viruses (HIV-1 groups O and P) have originated in western lowland gorillas, according to an international team of scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Montpellier, the University of Edinburgh, and others.

3 Mar 2015