Biology Digest

  HAMBURG, June 11 (Reuters) - BioNTech   (22UAy.DE)   will go to court on Monday to defend itself against a lawsuit from a German woman who is seeking damages for alleged side effects of its COVID-19 vaccine, the first of potentially hundreds of cases in the country. The woman, exercising her right under German privacy law for her name not to be made public, is suing the German vaccine maker for at least 150,000 euro ($161,500) in damages for bodily harm as well as compensation for unspecified material damage, according to the regional court in Hamburg which is hearing the case and law firm Rogert & Ulbrich, which is representing her. The plaintiff claims she suffered upper-body pain, swollen extremities, fatigue and sleeping disorder due to the vaccine. The first hearing is on Monday. Tobias Ulbrich, a lawyer at Rogert & Ulbrich, told Reuters he aimed to challenge in court the assessment made by European Union regulators and German vaccine assessment bodies that the BioNTech

  FRANKFURT, June 29 (Reuters) - BioNTech  (22UAy.DE)  and its U.S. partner OncoC4 Inc say they have started a late-stage study of their lung cancer immunotherapy candidate as the German COVID-19 vaccine maker seeks to advance its traditional focus on oncology drug development. The Phase III trial, which can potentially lead to a regulatory filing, will enrol about 600 patients, the companies said in a statement on Thursday. It will seek to show a benefit for people suffering from metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, which has progressed despite treatment with so-called checkpoint inhibitor drugs such as Merck & Co's  (MRK.N)  Keytruda. Earlier this month, a mid-stage trial showed that the drug candidate known as  gotistobart  shrunk tumours in close to 30% of study participants. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/biontech-oncoc4-start-late-stage-lung-cancer-drug-trial-2023-06-29/ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/05/moderna-cancer-vaccine-with-merck-keytr

  There’s hope for treating one of the   deadliest forms of cancer.  A pancreatic cancer vaccine has proven to be effective in half of patients treated in a small trial, according to a study published in the  journal Nature  on Wednesday. Pancreatic cancer — often  called the “silent killer,”  since symptoms don’t show up in most patients until it has spread to other organs — occurs when cells in the pancreas mutate and form a tumor. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York sent tumor samples from 16 patients to scientists at  BioNTech in Germany,  the same company Pfizer teamed up with to produce COVID-19 vaccines.  After scientists analyzed proteins in patient’s cancer cells, they used messenger RNA — a molecule that contains instructions to direct cells to make a protein — in a vaccine for each patient, attempting to tell the immune system to attack the cancer cells. Along with the vaccine, subjects were also given chemotherapy and a drug meant to keep tumors from combatti

  Researchers say they have successfully completed a trial of a personalised cancer vaccine that uses the same messenger-RNA technology as Covid jabs. The experimental vaccine, made by Moderna and MSD, is designed to prime the immune system to seek and destroy cancerous cells. Doctors hope work such as this could lead to revolutionary new ways to fight skin, bowel and other types of cancer. Moderna and MSD called it "a new paradigm" moment. Other pharmaceutical companies are looking to run similar studies. But this is the first phase-IIb randomised clinical trial to test the investigational mRNA vaccine in patients. Could Covid vaccine technology crack cancer? Patients taking Keytruda for advanced melanoma were less likely to die, or have the skin cancer reoccur, if they also had the jab, mRNA-4157/V940, Moderna and MSD said. The findings, in 157 patients, have not yet been scrutinised by independent experts or regulators. More trials will be needed to check how effective the

The U.S. has named a veterinary tranquilizer as an “emerging threat” when it’s mixed with the powerful opioid fentanyl, clearing the way for more efforts to stop the spread of xylazine. The Office of National Drug Control Policy announced the designation Wednesday, the first time the office has used it since the category for fast-growing drug dangers was created in 2019. Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the drug policy office, said xylazine (pronounced ZAI’-luh-zeen) has become increasingly common in all regions of the country. It was detected in about 800 drug deaths in the U.S. in 2020, most of them in the Northeast. By 2021, it was present in more than 3,000 fatalities — with the most in the South — according to a report last year from the Drug Enforcement Administration. “We cannot ignore what we’re seeing,” Gupta said. “We must act and act now.” Xylazine was approved for veterinary use in 1971. Sometimes known as “tranq,” it has been showing up in supplies of illicit drugs used by hum

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. national emergency to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic ended Monday as President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan congressional resolution to bring it to a close after three years —  weeks before it was set to expire  alongside a separate public health emergency. The national emergency allowed the government to take sweeping steps to respond to the virus and support the country’s economic, health and welfare systems. Some of the emergency measures have already been successfully wound-down, while others are still being phased out. The public health emergency — it underpins tough immigration restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border — is set to expire on May 11. The White House issued a one-line statement Monday saying Biden had signed the measure behind closed doors, after having publicly opposed the resolution though not to the point of issuing a veto. More than 197 Democrats in the House voted against it when the GOP-controlled chamber passed it in February. Last

SAN RAFAEL, California, April 11 (Reuters) - As the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, a California county is using the same wastewater monitoring program it used to track the coronavirus to go after another deadly public health crisis: opioids. Marin County, north of San Francisco, began a pilot program in February to collect wastewater samples from its sanitation agency and test them for the presence of substances like fentanyl, methamphetamines, cocaine, and nicotine. Local authorities hope the data could be beneficial in assisting prevention and intervention efforts. For example, if there is an abundance of opioids present in the samples, they could boost the distribution of Narcan, which rapidly reverses the effects of the illegal drug, especially when given within minutes of the first signs of an overdose. "The problem of overdose is a public health crisis. We're losing one resident every five days in Marin County," said Dr. Matt Willis, Marin County's public health offic