Moderna, Inc a biotechnology company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, announces that it has completed manufacturing of clinical trial material for its variant-specific vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273.351, against the SARS-CoV-2 variant known as B.1.351 first identified in the Republic of South Africa, and has shipped doses to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a Phase 1 clinical trial that will be led and funded by the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

A federally approved heart medication shows significant effectiveness in interfering with SARS-CoV-2 entry into the human cell host, according to a new study by a research team from Texas A&M University and The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).

The medication bepridil, which goes by the trade name Vascor, is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat angina, a heart condition.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) calls for the team that is currently investigating the origins of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China to be disbanded and reassembled by a completely independent panel with unfettered access and diplomatic immunity for all members. A conflict of interest of one of the current WHO-sanctioned team members and the tightly choreographed format of the field research cast doubt on the investigation’s credibility and the validity of the eventual findings.

Smiths Detection, a global leader in threat detection and security screening technologies, reports that its BioFlash® Biological Identifier is capable of detecting SARS-CoV-2 in the air following tests conducted by the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited is pleased to announce that it recently entered into an outsourcing agreement with AstraZeneca K.K. (hereinafter, AstraZeneca) to manufacture the AstraZeneca-developed COVID-19 vaccine, AZD1222, in Japan.

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, doctors and researchers rushed to find effective treatments. There was little time to spare. "Making new drugs takes forever," says Caroline Uhler, a computational biologist in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems and Society, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "Really, the only expedient option is to repurpose existing drugs."