Emerging Infectious Diseases
The Partnership for Research on Ebola Vaccination (PREVAC) recently launched a new project called PREVAC-UP, which will evaluate three Ebola vaccine regimens for five years after vaccination.
The study will assess several factors within these treatments: their long-term safety, the durability... Read More »
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. got the go-ahead from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to pursue its proposed development plan for its chikungunya virus vaccine candidate.
The company has proposed conducting a Phase 3 trial using Serum Neutralizing Antibodies (SNA) to predict clinical benefit of... Read More »
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $1.4 million grant to the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) to ensure standards and reagents are available to low-cost oral cholera vaccine (OCV) manufacturers.
International standardization in the manufacturing and release of OCV will... Read More »
Backed by a $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, researchers from the University of Dundee will push the LEADS4TB program to find new treatment options over the next three years.
"We want to improve how we do drug discovery for TB, and identify new candidate drugs to treat... Read More »
A new study recently published by researchers at the Zoonotic Bornavirus Consortium (ZooBoCo) theorized that, in the wake of eight new Borna disease virus linked deaths, the disease may have been operating unnoticed for decades behind the scenes.
Borna is a virus that leaps from shrews to... Read More »
A study created by the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has demonstrated the promise of a new, universal flu vaccine, displaying long-lasting protection against six influenza viruses.
The... Read More »
The non-profit Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) announced this week that $1.4 million will be awarded to the British company Centauri Therapeutics, for a new platform in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria.
The platform is under development but... Read More »
Though everything might appear normal at first for Zika victims in the womb, according to a new report from a multi-institutional research group led by Children’s National Hospital, the long-term effects on Zika-exposed infants can fly under the radar.
In fact, in 77 out of 82 lab-confirmed... Read More »
In its last weekly report of the year, covering Dec. 18 to Dec. 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 29 new confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease were logged in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The cases spread across four health... Read More »
Though a vaccine for Valley Fever remains out of reach, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) took time at the end of the year to list out all of the accomplishments made to bolster action against the disease over the past year.
“In order to fight this orphan disease, increasing awareness and... Read More »
In a recent study, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) discovered that intravenous tuberculosis (TB) vaccination provided significantly greater protection than traditional injections in... Read More »
Researchers from the University of California, Davis, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have discovered that outbreaks of human disease may be due to genetic mutations and that viruses may change as they expand their geographic range.
The researchers studied how the Zika... Read More »
A group of Democratic lawmakers recently crafted legislation designed to combat Valley Fever through enhanced diagnosis, treatment, and vaccine development.
Reps. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), TJ Cox (D-CA), Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), Josh Harder (D-CA), Jim Costa (D-CA), Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ), Ann... Read More »
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) established the Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium.
This leadership consortium will encompass NIAID’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEUs). NIAID, which is part of the National Institute of Health (NIH),... Read More »
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has delivered a cautious appraisal of the federal spending bill for FY 2020, noting that while it will strengthen public health and research efforts, it undercuts -- at Americans’ peril -- HIV investment and immunization efforts, among... Read More »
It’s a disease that’s killed millions of pigs globally, crippled farming, and has no cure. African swine fever has devastated the Asian pork industry, as China has culled about half of its total swine population since the disease took hold of that country in August 2018.
Outbreaks of African... Read More »
Approximately $200 million has been allocated for the creation of a universal influenza vaccine that could protect against multiple strains of the flu virus in Congress’s year-end spending package.
U.S. Sen, Edward Markey (D-MA) has spearheaded the effort to boost funding for the flu vaccine.... Read More »
Recent tests of an experimental Zika virus vaccine in rhesus macaques, a primate, show the vaccine lowered levels of virus in pregnant monkeys and improved fetal outcomes, according to a new study in Science Translational Medicine.
Zika is transmitted via mosquitoes and through sex. It causes... Read More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Thursday the approval of a vaccine created by Merck & Co., Inc. as a preventative measure against the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus in individuals 18 years of age or older.
In 2018, the World Health Organization and the Democratic Republic... Read More »
Researchers from Princeton University have found that climate change has the potential to make respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) outbreaks less severe but more common in high-risk areas.
The studies consisted of climate condition influence on annual outbreaks of RSV in the United States and... Read More »
The U.S. House Appropriations Committee on Monday released the domestic priorities and international assistance appropriations minibus, which includes ramped-up final budget amounts for several biodefense-related items, including the Strategic National Stockpile.
In releasing the text of the... Read More »
Researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, recently developed a self-cleaning, plastic surface that repels bacteria.
The goal is to prevent the transfer of dangerous bacteria and antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
The surface is a treated form of conventional transparent wrap... Read More »
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), long a source of concerted health efforts to combat one of the largest Ebola outbreaks ever recorded, experienced a sharp increase in cases last week -- and many may be linked to an individual’s reinfection.
In all, 27 new cases were confirmed last... Read More »
One of the most searing memories Thomas Frieden had during the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak was one in which he deeply questioned the international community’s effectiveness in supporting the health infrastructure of Ebola-plagued nations.
Then head of the Centers for Disease Control and... Read More »
Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune have identified 150 possible inhibitors within the Nipah virus -- giving them starting points for drugs to target for the currently untreatable disease.
"We conclude that it is highly likely that the proposed inhibitors... Read More »
Researchers at the University of Queensland have created a technology that will help create safer hybrid viruses at higher volumes for research and diagnostic efforts involving mosquito-borne diseases.
The key to the technology was the Binjari virus. Study researchers exploited the benign... Read More »
The Stop TB Partnership launched an update to its plan to end tuberculosis that includes billions in annual funding.
The partnership’s Global Plan to End TB 2018-2022 calls for $2.6 billion per year for the research and development of new tuberculosis (TB) diagnostic tools, new drug regimens,... Read More »
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) are testing a vaccine to protect against serious diarrheal illnesses caused by food and water contaminated with bacteria like E. coli and Shigella.
Drs. Wilbur Chen and Eileen Barry will lead these tests, thanks to $4.5... Read More »
Janssen Pharmaceutical and Bavarian Nordic will provide up to 200,000 regimens of its investigational Ebola vaccine to the Republic of Rwanda to support a new immunization program.
The vaccine regimen, which consists of the MVA-BN Filo vaccine from Bavarian Nordic and the Ad26.ZEBOV vaccine... Read More »
Per an agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Sanofi Pasteur will gain $226 million to increase its domestic pandemic influenza vaccine production capabilities.
This money will go to the clinical development and manufacturing of an adjuvanted recombinant pandemic... Read More »
A joint effort by Duke-NUS Medical School and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has built The Nipah Virus International Conference for experts and health stakeholders to address the threat of Nipah virus collaboratively.
“There are currently no specific drugs or... Read More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched CURE ID, an online repository that allows the clinical community to report their experiences treating infectious diseases.
CURE ID – which can be accessed via smartphone or other mobile devices – is a platform that enables the crowdsourcing of... Read More »
Thanks to a new program approved by the board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, last week, a global emergency stockpile of Ebola vaccines will be funded and opened for use by those in need of outbreak and prevention efforts.
Gavi intends to pump $178 million into the program through 2025, with a... Read More »
A new report recently showed that the Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (TCV) has a more than 81 percent effective rate among vaccinated children in Nepal.
The report, provided to the New England Journal of Medicine by the Typhoid Vaccine Acceleration Consortium (TyVAC), was based on a field study of... Read More »
The constantly changing nature of the influenza virus makes it an annual effort of scientists, manufacturers, and the medical community to devise and disseminate vaccines to combat the disease.
What if those efforts could be streamlined to develop a universal flu vaccine that could attack any... Read More »
