The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard today committed up to $125 million in seed funding to speed-up the response to the COVID-19 epidemic by identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling-up treatments. The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will play a catalytic role by accelerating and evaluating new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients with COVID-19 in the immediate term, and other viral pathogens in the longer-term. “Viruses like COVID-19 spread rapidly, but the development of vaccines and treatments to stop them moves slowly,” said Mark Suzman, chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “If we…
Author: Brett Johnson
The fingerprint blood test would take 15 minutes to administer at home to determine Coronavirus diagnosis without having to leave the living room. Management anticipates the rapid test kits will be available late May to June after getting approval from the Federal Drug Administration. 1 drop of blood. 15 minute reaction. This will tell someone if they have a natural immunity. This rapid serology test detects IgM and IgG antibodies against novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in the blood, which indicates that a person has been exposed and developed antibodies against the virus. If someone isn’t currently experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, the test…
In an April 5th memo, Professor Sir John Bell noting that no tests to date have performed well. The UK government testing strategy is intended to manage all aspects of Covid-19, including PCR tests on swabs from the nose or throat to detect the virus as well blood testing to detect people who might have had the virus and hence be protected with immunity. These people would be able to go back to work without the fear of being infected again because they are now immune to the disease. This combination provides citizens the information they and the health system…
Princeton based Sonnet Biotherapeutics [NASDAQ:SONN] has an interesting “Trojan Horse” approach that appears to have considerable promise with application in Covid – 19. Sonnet has developed a unique platform that leverages several favorable biological properties of human serum Albumin. They have invented and developed an ingenious approach that converts endogenous albumin into a drug-loaded and/or immune stimulatory Trojan Horse that is taken up by unknowing cancer cells, leading to their destruction”. To see the full Report visit the Research Reports tab or this link.
By learning from a MERS outbreak in 2015, South Korea was prepared and acted swiftly to ramp up testing when the new coronavirus appeared there. Meanwhile, the U.S., plagued by delay and dysfunction, wasted its advantage. In the aftermath of a 2015 outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome that killed 38 people and cratered the economy, South Korea took a hard look at what had gone wrong. Korean officials enacted a key reform, allowing the government to give near-instantaneous approval to testing systems in an emergency. Within weeks of the current outbreak in Wuhan, China, four Korean companies had…
Samsung Biologics and Vir Biotechnology, Inc announced April 9th a manufacturing agreement under which Samsung Biologics will perform large scale manufacturing services for Vir’s SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibody (mAb) program. “Vir’s candidate molecules supported by Samsung Biologics’ production scale have the potential to bring hope to countless lives across nations suffering from COVID-19.” said Dr. Tae Han Kim, CEO of Samsung Biologics. Vir’s lead SARS-CoV-2 mAb development candidates, VIR-7831 and VIR-7832, have demonstrated high affinity for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and are highly potent in neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 in live-virus cellular assays. Vir plans to proceed directly into a phase 2 clinical trial…
Long-term protection to this virus comes from antibodies, small proteins produced by your immune system that attack the virus and neutralise it so it cannot be spread and cannot do any more damage to the person infected. These antibodies emerge during an infection and peak 28 days after the infection. They then remain for months afterwards continuing to provide protection, and the cells that produce them also are available to fight off the infection if it returns. These antibodies see anything foreign (like a virus) and bind to many different parts of the virus. Some antibodies are better than others…
Cepheid has received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its rapid molecular diagnostic test, Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2. The test is designed for the qualitative detection of SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes coronavirus (Covid-19) disease. Designed to operate on the company’s automated GeneXpert Systems, it has a detection time of approximately 45 minutes. Cepheid chief medical and technology officer Dr David Persing said: “By leveraging the design principles of our current Xpert Xpress Flu/RSV cartridge technology, in which multiple regions of the viral genome are targeted to provide rapid detection of current and potential future…