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Battelle recently showcased its Resource Effective Bioidentification System (REB+) and Multi-Threat Decontamination System (MTDS) as a means of demonstrating efforts to combat Chemical/Biological (CB) threats.
The demonstration stemmed from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) funding... Read More »
A preclinical study conducted on non-human primates and published this week showed potential in a second-generation mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CV2CoV, created by the joint efforts of biopharmaceutical companies CureVac N.V. and GSK.
Among cynomolgus macaques, the new candidate -- an... Read More »
With diagnostic testing as important as ever in the battle to contain COVID-19, researchers from various institutions under the umbrella of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have banded together to create a new sample preparation method for detecting SARS-CoV-2.
The collaboration has... Read More »
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Thursday that its agency-wide forced labor team was awarded the 2021 Service to America Medals (“Sammies”) People’s Choice Award by the non-profit Partnership for Public Service.
CBP’s forced labor team investigates goods suspected of... Read More »
The specialty vaccine firm Valneva SE has initiated a Phase 3 trial for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, VLA2001.
VLA2001-304 seeks to generate data in the elderly and is designed to potentially enable variant-bridging through immune-comparability. Study data is slated to complement ongoing... Read More »
According to a new manuscript published in Science last week, the majority of people given Moderna Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine maintained antibodies not just against SARS-CoV-2, but against many of its variants of concern, for six months after a second dose.
The two-dose vaccine has been... Read More »
First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) officials recently joined AT&T personnel in unveiling tools designed to aid Rhode Island first responders.
AT&T has delivered a pair of Compact Rapid Deployables (CRDs) to the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA) - adding the state is the... Read More »
The U.S. Navy has awarded a $273 Million contract to Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) in support of fleet ships that include aircraft carriers and surface ships.
“Continuous modernization and sustainment of our nation’s fleet is essential to our national security,” Garry Schwartz,... Read More »
Howe & Howe Inc., a subsidiary of Textron Systems Corporation, recently unveiled the Thermite EV2, an all-electric firefighting robot, as well as a new handheld controller.
“It’s important that we give our first responders the best we have to offer so that they can complete their missions... Read More »
Lockheed Martin has secured a $157 million Missile Defense Agency contract to upgrade Command, Control, Battle Management & Communications (C2BMC) system capability.
Officials indicated the scope of work would include augmenting C2BMC’S engagement support capability for the Ground-Based... Read More »
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently selected three teams to support the Harnessing Enzymatic Activity for Lifesaving Remedies (HEALR) program.
The HEALR program, which bolsters chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, and microbiology expertise to transform the field of... Read More »
Groups of medical experts this week proposed a standardized definition for defining and evaluating placental SARS-CoV-2 infections to optimize both clinical care and new research, as well as the pursuit of COVID-19 vaccinations for pregnant individuals.
The first came from a panel of experts... Read More »
Regulatory approval was granted for two new clinical trials of INO-4800 in China this week, allowing its creator INOVIO and its partners Advaccine Biopharmaceuticals Suzhou Co. Ltd. and Sinovac Biotechnology to investigate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of different... Read More »
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently announced it has been working with the cruise industry to modernize the passenger arrival process via biometric facial comparison.
The technology provides an extra layer of security while streamlining travel into the United States by... Read More »
For two days at the end of July, NTI | bio organized a virtual workshop of more than 40 international participants to address the possibility of developing a new Joint Assessment Mechanism to plug gaps in global biosecurity laid bare by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Originally proposed by NTI... Read More »
A new partnership announced last week between Integrum Scientific and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) will advance progress toward a Rift Valley fever (RVF) vaccine by developing an international antibody standard and validation of new assays.
From now until September... Read More »
BARDA’s Division of Research Innovation and Ventures (DRIVe) announced Thursday that it will partner with US Biologic Inc. to develop an oral vaccine for two strains of the influenza virus.
Part of BARDA DRIVe’s Beyond the Needle program, the partnership’s goal is to make vaccines and... Read More »
A Phase Three trial of Valneva SE’s chikungunya vaccine candidate, VLA1553, met with major success, according to topline results released last week that showed it induced protective neutralizing antibody titers in 98.5 percent of subjects after a single vaccination.
The trial involved 4,115... Read More »
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) introduced legislation last week that would allocate $2 billion to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
The Disease X Act would provide $2 billion over the next four years -- $500 million per year, beginning in 2022 -- for BARDA to... Read More »
Biotechnology company INOVIO dosed its first participant in a Phase 2 trial of a DNA vaccine for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
MERS, another coronavirus disease, is far deadlier than COVID-19, with a kill rate of approximately 34 percent. Fortunately, though, its transmission rate has... Read More »
A cocktail of casirivimab and imdevimab known as REGEN-COV, produced by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., cut the risk of symptomatic infections by 81 percent in a Phase 3 trial of more than 1,500 people, according to a new publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Even better,... Read More »
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced that it awarded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants to two companies.
The companies will use the money to develop an in-building coverage analysis system (ICAS) that will use existing first responder radio and... Read More »
Faced with a disease that tends to hit suddenly, erratically, and with extremely lethal effects, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced last week that it will provide up to $188,000 to support Universiti Malaya (UM) research into the Nipah virus.
UM, based in... Read More »
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the founding of Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X), a global non-profit partnership dedicated to funding and supporting the development of new products to counter antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
According to... Read More »
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is permitting Emergent BioSolutions Inc. to resume manufacturing the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Janssen vaccine at its Bayview facility in Baltimore, according to the multinational biopharmaceutical company.
“We are proud to be resuming production of... Read More »
State funding for public health departments has dropped by 16 percent since 2010, and these same departments have lost a quarter of their workforce in the last decade.
How can the United States adequately prepare for the next pandemic when the public health infrastructure is woefully... Read More »
In a first for virus detection, the company Opteev this week launched a plug-in airborne virus detector known as ViraWarn to scan for COVID-19, flu, and other virus particles in the air indoors and then warn those who might be affected.
Meant as prevention rather than confirmation of infection,... Read More »
A new, Battelle-developed system known as TechAware Search Continuous Automated Scanning for Technology Transformation (CASTT) proposes to help identify epidemic threats through a mix of text data analysis, behavioral change prediction, and creation of a graph neural network.
The project is... Read More »
With the COVID-19 pandemic entering a new phase, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) continues to emphasize testing in addition to the growing number of vaccines, and as such, has entered a new agreement with Cepheid, Inc. to develop two additional... Read More »
Recognizing that many data sets are needed to tell the full story of the COVID-19 pandemic and understand if herd immunity can be achieved, two scientists from the University of Washington have created a statistical model of key COVID-19 data to model the disease’s true prevalence in the United... Read More »
A single dose of Vaxzevria was shown to be 82 percent effective against cases of severe disease, hospitalization, or death caused by Beta/Gamma variant of SARS-CoV-2, according to pre-print data from the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN).
Vaxzevria is another two-dose vaccine.... Read More »
Continuing to flesh out medical countermeasure options for the ongoing threat of COVID-19, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced this week that it will provide $13.1 million to Shanghai Zerun Biotechnology Co., Ltd. for clinical trials and scale-up support of vaccine... Read More »
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) recently issued a request for information (RFI) regarding commercial Blast Resistant Trash Receptacles (BRTRs).
“Trash receptacles appear in most public spaces as essential but ordinary objects,” National... Read More »
All 625 slots of a randomized Phase 2 trial of the joint-Valneva SE and Pfizer Inc. Lyme disease vaccine candidate VLA15-221 have been filled with participants, finishing the recruitment phase of the trial.
The trial is focused on participants between 5 to 65 years old. They will receive doses... Read More »
A phase 2/3 study that put oral opaganib to 475 patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 affiliated pneumonia concluded this week, and its creator, RedHill Biopharma Ltd., said that top-line results are expected to follow in a matter of weeks.
"Emerging data is showing that variants are... Read More »
