A new COVID-19 vaccine candidate is entering Phase 1 clinical human testing today, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted an application from Inovio Pharmaceuticals under the regulator’s Investigational New Drug program. Inovio plans to inject its first volunteer test subject with the INO-4800 DNA vaccine candidate it has developed, following promising results from preclinical studies performed on animals that did indicate increased immune response.




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The downward trend of daily deaths from the coronavirus continued on Sunday, with the latest number falling to 674, according to official figures supplied by the Health Ministry. This marks a fall of 135 compared to Saturday, which saw 809. Sunday’s figure is the lowest seen in 10 days. The highest total so far was reported on April 2, with 950 fatalities from Covid-19 in a 24-hour period.

The total number of deaths in Spain from the coronavirus now stands at 12,418, with 130,759 c...

There are currently more than 10,000 scientific articles related to coronavirus infections. In fact, in recent weeks, research to combat COVID-19 has accelerated, and more than 4,000 new academic papers have been published on potential vaccines, therapies, and treatments. Processing this volume of information manually would be unmanageable to be able to advance this urgently needed research fast enough. IRB Barcelona’s Structural Bioinformatics and Network Biology Laboratory, led by I...

As part of the Trump Administration’s all-hands-on-deck approach across public, academic and private sectors to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stood up a new program to expedite the development of potentially safe and effective life-saving treatments. The program, known as the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program (CTAP), is using every tool at the agency’s disposal to bring new therapies to sick patients as quickly as possible, while at the same ...

Via The Guardian, Julia Kollewe write: Oxford firm to screen 15,000 drugs in search for coronavirus cureExscientia to use AI to hunt through compounds which have passed human trials
An Oxford-based firm that uses artificial intelligence to develop new medicines has teamed up with a UK national science facility to screen more than 15,000 drugs for their effectiveness as a treatment for Covid-19.

Exscientia, a spinoff company from the University of Dundee that is now based in Oxford s...

The Trump administration is spending nearly half a billion dollars on one company in the race to find a coronavirus vaccine.




That’s according to a $456 million order with Johnson & Johnson’s Pharmaceuticals arm Janssen, which specified a “new vaccine asset for 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19),” Forbes found. It’s the largest reported amount spent on a vaccine project to date, even though the pharma giant hasn’t yet started any clinical trials as other firms have.

Architects have designed mobile hospitals in order to provide intensive care to the patients of coronavirus, which can increase their chance of survival.

An Italian design company has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create prefabricated intensive care units (ICUs), to deal with escalating numbers of coronavirus patients around the world.
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Via MIT NEWS, David L. Chandler write: MIT-based team works on rapid deployment of open-source, low-cost ventilator
Clinical and design considerations will be published online; goal is to support rapid scale-up of device production to alleviate hospital shortages.
One of the most pressing shortages facing hospitals during the Covid-19 emergency is a lack of ventilators. These machines can keep patients breathing when they no longer can on their own, and they can cost around $30,000 each...

Federal health officials on Friday approved a coronavirus test that can provide results in less than 15 minutes, using the same technology that powers some rapid flu tests.

Teased by Vice President Mike Pence in a Thursday press briefing, the new diagnostic test could accelerate testing in the United States, allowing for rapid results in doctors' offices. But shortages of critical equipment used to collect patient specimens, like masks and swabs, could blunt its impact.
The US Food ...

The coronavirus is not mutating significantly as it circulates through the human population, according to scientists who are closely studying the novel pathogen’s genetic code. That relative stability suggests the virus is less likely to become more or less dangerous as it spreads, and represents encouraging news for researchers hoping to create a long-lasting vaccine.
Scientists now are studying more than 1,000 different samples of the virus, Peter Thielen, a molecular geneticist at the J...

VESper™ is a new device that allows one ventilator to support up to four patients under emergency use authorization by the FDA. Hospitals can apply to receive the free source code and printing specifications for the device.



VESper™ is a unique ventilator expansion device that allows a single ventilator to support up to four patients during times of acute equipment shortages such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Produced using 3D printing technology, the device is develo...

Spain's Grifols has agreed to work with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other agencies to gather plasma from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 and test potential therapies for the disease, the pharmaceutical firm said on Wednesday.

The plasma will be processed to produce hyperimmune immunoglobins, which will then be put to pre-clinical and clinical tests to see if they can help treat the disease, Grifols said in a statement.

COVID-19 is caused by the corona...