Vaccine News and Research

Latest Vaccine News and Research

Agenus enters research agreement with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Agenus Inc. today announced it has entered into a research agreement with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) using Agenus' proprietary cancer vaccine technology.

24 Jan 2011

Northwest Biotherapeutics resumes enrollment in DCVax Phase II clinical trial for GBM brain cancer

Northwest Biotherapeutics announced today that the Company is resuming enrollment of additional new patients into its ongoing 240-patient, double blind, randomized, placebo controlled Phase II clinical trial of DCVax for Glioblastoma multiforme brain cancer.

24 Jan 2011

Family Research Council calls for legislative action and increased oversight of abortion clinics

Family Research Council is demanding answers, increased oversight and legislative action in the wake of the arrest of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist charged with eight counts of murder, including a patient and seven newborn infants.

24 Jan 2011

Positive interim data from ongoing V5 Phase IIb imm01 trial against tuberculosis

Immune Network, a company in the business of development and commercialization of immune therapies, announced today that its newly acquired business, Immunitor, has published interim data from the ongoing Phase IIb imm01 clinical trial of V5 in tuberculosis conducted at its second site in Ukraine.

24 Jan 2011

Rotavirus vaccine significantly cuts child hospitalizations, study says

Developing and developed countries that require children to be vaccinated against rotavirus "have significantly reduced the number of children admitted to hospitals with the disease, a report showed on Thursday," Reuters reports (Kelland, 1/20).

24 Jan 2011

CRI, Oncovir sign new investment agreement to produce immunological stimulant

Cancer Research Institute, a U.S. nonprofit organization founded in 1953 to advance the science of tumor immunology and foster the discovery and development of new cancer immunotherapies, announced today that its Cancer Vaccine Acceleration Fund, a joint initiative with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, has completed a new investment agreement with Oncovir, a biotechnology company based in Washington, D.C., to enable the production of the immunological stimulant Hiltonol- (Poly-ICLC).

24 Jan 2011

CVAF completes new investment agreement with Oncovir for production of Hiltonol

Cancer Research Institute, Inc. (CRI), a U.S. nonprofit organization founded in 1953 to advance the science of tumor immunology and foster the discovery and development of new cancer immunotherapies, announced today that its Cancer Vaccine Acceleration Fund (CVAF), a joint initiative with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR), has completed a new investment agreement with Oncovir, Inc., a biotechnology company based in Washington, D.C., to enable the production of the immunological stimulant Hiltonol® (Poly-ICLC).

21 Jan 2011

Initiative to eliminate cervical cancer in North Carolina

Patricia Gregory of Cary was only 24 years old when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Now a mother of an 11-year-old daughter, she considers herself blessed to have a child, as cervical cancer can make women unable to bear children.

21 Jan 2011

Vibrio cholerae kills E. coli bacteria

Just over a year after the earthquake in Haiti killed 222,000 people there's a new problem that is killing Haitians. A cholera outbreak has doctors in the area scrambling and the water-borne illness has already claimed 3600 lives according to officials with M-dicin Sans Fronti-res (Doctors without Borders).

21 Jan 2011

Opinions: GAVI; Haitian women; Clinton's foreign policy

"Vaccines are among the greatest scientific contributions to human welfare. They are also some of the largest humanitarian contributions of developed nations to the rest of the world. So it is unfortunate that a decade of vaccine controversy has overshadowed a decade of vaccine miracles," Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson writes in an opinion piece reflecting on the contributions of the GAVI Alliance over the past decade.

21 Jan 2011

Routine rotavirus vaccine shows a significant drop in diarrhea cases: Study

A latest study has shown that the rotavirus vaccines have helped drastically reduce hospital visits around the world. Rotavirus can lead to fatal cases of diarrhea in children and causes half a million deaths in kids under five each year around the world. Developing countries are particularly at risk.

20 Jan 2011

FDA grants Soligenix Orphan Drug Designation to RiVax for prevention of ricin intoxication

Soligenix, Inc., a late-stage biopharmaceutical company, announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Orphan Drug Designation to RiVax™ for the prevention of ricin intoxication. RiVax™ is a proprietary vaccine that contains a recombinant subunit of the A chain of ricin toxin which induces ricin neutralizing antibodies in humans and animals.

20 Jan 2011

UMB enters license agreement with Bali BioSciences for new strategy to combat sepsis, HIV/AIDS

The University of Maryland, Baltimore's (UMB) Office of Technology Transfer has completed a license agreement with Bali BioSciences LLC, an early-stage company pursuing an unusual, yet clever, strategy to combat disease.

20 Jan 2011

DARPA grants $5.6 million to Dana-Farber to develop viable countermeasures against unknown pathogen

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have received a $5.6 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Army Research Office to develop transient immunity against known, unknown, naturally occurring, or engineered disease-causing pathogens.

20 Jan 2011

World Bank announces additional $5m grant to fight cholera in Haiti

The World Bank on Tuesday "announced a $15 million grant to Haiti to fight a persistent cholera epidemic," SAPA/Health24 reports. In a press release, the bank said it approved an additional $5 million to be added to a previously announced $10 million grant. "The funds, said the organisation in [the] statement, will go towards public campaigns to prevent infection and increase the capacity of Haiti's health ministry to deal with the emergency," the news service writes (1/19).

20 Jan 2011

WHO Director-General expresses concern over public mistrust of vaccines

During the WHO's executive board meeting Monday, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan expressed concerns over what she called a "'worrisome' public mistrust of vaccines, following signs of a tail-off in flu vaccination," Agence France-Presse reports (1/18).

20 Jan 2011

Small molecules may inhibit entry of Ebola into human cells

Ebola, a virus that causes deadly hemorrhagic fever in humans, has no known cure or vaccine. But a new study by University of Illinois at Chicago scientists has uncovered a family of small molecules which appear to bind to the virus's outer protein coat and may inhibit its entry into human cells.

20 Jan 2011

Malaria parasite caught in action on film for the first time

Australian researchers have managed to take pictures of microscopic malaria parasite as it invades a human red blood cell. This will provide a deeper understanding of the parasite’s behaviour and may help fight it. Up to 10% of the world’s population contract malaria every year and a million people, mostly pregnant women and children, die as a result of the parasite transmitted by infected mosquitoes.

19 Jan 2011

Salk Institute uncovers presenilin's productive side

Mutant presenilin is infamous for its role in the most aggressive form of Alzheimer's disease-early-onset familial Alzheimer's-which can strike people as early as their 30s. In their latest study, researchers at the Salk Institute uncovered presenilin's productive side: It helps embryonic motor neurons navigate the maze of chemical cues that pull, push and hem them in on their way to their proper targets.

19 Jan 2011

Collaborative study may lead to improved influenza vaccine and vaccines for other respiratory virus infections

A collaborative project between researchers at the Trudeau Institute and their colleagues at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., offers new insights that may lead to an improved strategy to protect against the influenza virus and other viruses that infect the respiratory tract.

19 Jan 2011