Disease/Infection News

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FDA approves Roche's new HIV viral load test

Roche announced today that a new HIV viral load test has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and will be commercially available in the US later this year.

2 Jul 2012

Janssen seeks accelerated FDA approval for bedaquiline to treat MDR-TB

Janssen Research & Development, LLC today announced it has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking accelerated approval for the use of the investigational drug bedaquiline (TMC207) as an oral treatment, to be used as part of combination therapy for pulmonary, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in adults.

2 Jul 2012

Safer alternative to experimental gene therapy against HIV infection

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered a surprisingly simple and safe method to disrupt specific genes within cells. The scientists highlighted the medical potential of the new technique by demonstrating its use as a safer alternative to an experimental gene therapy against HIV infection.

2 Jul 2012

Big challenges from antibiotic resistant bacteria

Antibiotic resistant bacteria are increasing and spreading at an alarming speed. The bacterial evolution is overwhelming our antibiotic defense. More and more bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics resulting in fatal consequences for millions of people. We need common action and responsibility for the development of new effective antibiotics and to stop antibiotic misuse.

30 Jun 2012

New Lancet issue focuses on HIV ahead of AIDS 2012 conference

This week's issue of the Lancet "has an HIV theme ahead of the International AIDS Society meeting in Washington, D.C., ... on July 22-27," a Lancet editorial states, noting, "The issue of antiretrovirals for prevention, specifically pre-exposure prophylaxis, is presently under intense debate."

30 Jun 2012

Cooperation 'essential' to fight diseases that easily cross borders

"Cooperation is essential to combat diseases that cross national borders," Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy and a research scholar and lecturer at Princeton University, and Bryan Grenfell and Petra Klepac of Princeton University write in a SciDev.Net opinion piece.

29 Jun 2012

IAS president will use AIDS 2012 to say 'thank you' to U.S. for contributions to HIV/AIDS battle

Elly Katabira, president of the International AIDS Society and co-chair of the 19th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012), said he will use the conference as an occasion to say "thank you" to the U.S., VOA News reports.

29 Jun 2012

Gates Foundation plans to invest in biotech companies to improve global access to treatments, vaccines for infectious diseases

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "plans to take equity stakes in up to a dozen biotech companies this year, signaling a shift towards a 'venture capital' approach at the world's biggest philanthropic organization" and "marking a further move away from its traditional approach of grant-giving and towards a more business-oriented way to support the development of treatments and vaccines for infectious diseases affecting the world's poor," the Financial Times reports.

29 Jun 2012

Association between SCC and cutaneous HPV types

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of South Florida, the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, conducted a case control study and found associations between having antibodies to certain types of cutaneous human papillomavirus (HPV) and a kind of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma (SCC).

29 Jun 2012

More sophisticated process needed to vet research for possible security threats

Noting that the journal Science last week published the second of two controversial bird flu research papers, in which a team led by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam created a mutated strain of the virus that spreads easily among ferrets, a Washington Post editorial writes that "this is not the end of the story. Rather, it marks the beginning of an important chapter for both science and security."

29 Jun 2012

UMass Amherst biochemist receives NIH grant to map molecular structure of bacterial needle

Biochemist Alejandro Heuck at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently received a five-year, $950,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to map the molecular structure of a needle-like tool used by deadly bacteria to drill holes in mammalian cell walls.

29 Jun 2012

Inhibiting immune response during initial multi-drug therapy could speed TB treatment time

Inhibiting a key immune response in mice during initial multi-drug treatment for tuberculosis could - paradoxically - shorten treatment time for the highly contagious lung infection according to new research from Johns Hopkins Children's Center and the Center for TB Research.

29 Jun 2012

Cost of dengue vaccine production could be as low as $0.20 per dose

Research funded by the Dengue Vaccine Initiative (DVI) involving an economic analysis of producing a tetravalent dengue vaccine shows that the cost could be as low as $0.20 per dose with an annual production level of 60 million doses packaged in ten-dose vials. The study used data on a vaccine developed by US NIH and the facilities of the Instituto Butantan in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

29 Jun 2012

RapidChek- SELECT Salmonella highly sensitive to the presence of S. Typhi vaccine in stool

Salmonella Typhi (S. Typhi) is the causative agent of typhoid fever, a serious health threat resulting in some 22 million new cases yearly and approximately 217,000 fatalities. A number of novel vaccine candidates using live attenuated strains of Salmonella are being developed, but care must be taken to ensure the bacteria are not excreted into the environment following vaccination.

29 Jun 2012

Medivir, Bristol-Myers Squibb to initiate TMC435 and daclatasvir phase II combination study in HCV

Medivir AB, the research-based pharmaceutical company focused on the development of high-value treatments for infectious diseases, announces that a phase II combination study with the investigational compound TMC435 and Bristol-Myers Squibb's investigational compound daclatasvir will start in July.

29 Jun 2012

Flu immunity depends on number of viruses involved during initial infection

Not only does the type of flu virus affect a patient's outcome, but a new research report appearing in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that the number of viruses involved in the initial infection may be important too.

29 Jun 2012

AASLD, EASL to hold special conference on therapy of HCV

The European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), together with the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), will be holding an exciting "Special Conference" dedicated to the timely topic of: Therapy of Hepatitis C: Clinical Application and Drug Development.

29 Jun 2012

Researchers probe origin of optimized antibodies against infections

An organism's ability to make new antibodies and use them to optimize its own immune defenses is of central importance in the fight against pathogens. In the case of severe infections, the overall relative speed with which an immune response proceeds could mean the difference between life and death.

29 Jun 2012

Scientists discover new gene in the influenza virus

Scientists have discovered a new gene in the influenza virus that helps the virus control the body's response to infection.

29 Jun 2012

Gilead submits cobicistat NDA with FDA for treatment of HIV

Gilead Sciences, Inc. announced today it has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for marketing approval of cobicistat, a pharmacoenhancing or "boosting" agent that increases blood levels of certain commercially available protease inhibitors, including atazanavir and darunavir, in order to enable once-daily dosing.

29 Jun 2012