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Re: Ridgeback EIDD-2801
PFE > The Race Is On: Why Pfizer May Be The Best Bet To Deliver A Vaccine By The Fall
The inside story behind the pandemic, the CEO and a promising, unproven treatment.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2020/05/20/the-man-betting-1-billion-that-pfizer-can-deliver-a-vaccine-by-this-fall/#395cec1382e9
Did The Oxford Covid Vaccine Work In Monkeys? Not Really
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/05/16/did-the-oxford-covid-vaccine-work-in-monkeys-not-really/#282d27033c71
Coronavirus study in China shows CanSino's vaccine spurs immune response
https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/cansino-coronavirus-vaccine-phase-1-results-china/578508/
Data from 96K COVID-19 pts shows those treated w/chloriquine or hydroxychloroquine alone or in combo with a macrolide (i.e. azithromycin) had much higher mortality. Those treated with HCQ + AZ had 5X more heart arrhythmia...
The Lancet: No evidence of benefit for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/tl-tln052220.php
Ivermectin...not so fast.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/11/whats-up-with-ivermectin
ABBV> Ibrutinib trialed to prevent CRS...
Dana-Farber to test blood cancer drug in COVID-19 patients
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/dana-farber-to-test-blood-cancer-drug-in-covid-19-patients/
Alpha-1 blocker trialed to prevent CRS...
Preventing 'cytokine storm' may ease severe COVID-19 symptoms
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-cytokine-storm-ease-severe-covid-.html
Brilacidin was developed originally by Polymedix as PMX-30063. It was one of my 1st biotech investments (loss) when I joined the BV board back in 2010-11. A lot of the regulars here are very familiar with the MOA of brilacidin. PMX-6003 was discussed thoroughly from 2010-13. I can't see how the MOA (defensin mimetic) would work against a virus like COVID-19 but others with more expertise may differ.
U.S. commits $1.2 billion to production of Oxford coronavirus vaccine
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-oxford-astrazenca-partnering-united-states/
Optigene (U.K.) trial for COVID-19 swab test based on loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) which gives results in 20 mins...
Trial of rapid coronavirus test launched in Hampshire
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/trial-of-rapid-coronavirus-test-launched-in-hampshire?mod=article_inline
A Prophet of Scientific Rigor—and a Covid Contrarian
https://www.wired.com/story/prophet-of-scientific-rigor-and-a-covid-contrarian/
U.S. has 2nd most COVID-19 cases per day per 1M population rolling 7 day avg.....
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?casesMetric=true&dailyFreq=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&country=USA+GBR+CAN+BRA+AUS+IND+ESP+DEU+FRA+BEL+CHN+DNK+ITA+JPN+NLD+SWE+SGP+NZL+GRC
MRNA press release...
Moderna Announces Positive Interim Phase 1 Data for its mRNA Vaccine (mRNA-1273) Against Novel Coronavirus
https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-positive-interim-phase-1-data-its-mrna-vaccine
Not a pretty picture...
Two Coasts. One Virus. How New York Suffered Nearly 10 Times the Number of Deaths as California.
https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california ;
MRNA > P1 vaccine results show immune response in all 3 cohorts...
BREAKING: Moderna posts a promising snapshot of human data for a leading Covid-19 vaccine
https://endpts.com/breaking-moderna-posts-a-promising-snapshot-of-human-data-for-a-leading-covid-19-vaccine/
Re: Herpes/AD connection. There is some evidence...
Multiscale Analysis of Independent Alzheimer’s Cohorts Finds Disruption of Molecular, Genetic, and Clinical Networks by Human Herpesvirus
https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30421-5#%20
Derk Lowe dissects a study from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, UNC, UCSD, and Mt. Sinai (NY) on details about the T cells of recovered COVID-19 pts. In summary the data shows "the prospects for a vaccine looks good" (link to paper at bottom)...
Good News on the Human Immune Response to the Coronavirus
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/15/good-news-on-the-human-immune-response-to-the-coronavirus
I'm sure those other countries had hot spots as well so you would have to extract those too.
jbog, do you believe absolute numbers are a better way to measure performance?
As a business owner do you ever look at revenue per employee? Or are the number of employees irrelevant? Just as low number of revs per employee signals inefficiency and lower profit margin so does a low number of tests per 1K population signal inefficiency which leads to more deaths.
Look at the graphs again...all countries who test more per 1K people than the U.S. have a lower death rate per 1M people than the U.S.
The U.S. is not #1 in COVID-19 testing based on data adjusted for population size.
Data from major industrialized countries...
The U.S. is 11th in testing per 1K population
The U.S. has the 3rd most deaths per 1M people based on a 7 day rolling avg.
Vin, I agree correlation does not prove causation...absent evidence. However I believe there is some evidence that vitamin D may provide some protection (i.e. Italian study) from COVID-19 infection. It's not conclusive but it's enough evidence to suggest there may be something there IMO. A larger sample size of several thousand pts would provide a more definitive answer.
Vin..what do you think of this?
Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data
https://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i6583
Ivermectin for CV is a dead end...
What’s Up With Ivermectin?
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/11/whats-up-with-ivermectin
FDA grants EUA for antigen test (85% sensitivity)...
FDA Grants Emergency-Use Status for First Coronavirus Antigen Test
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-to-grant-emergency-use-status-for-first-coronavirus-antigen-test-by-quidel-corp-11589031815?mod=e2tw
Discussion on MedCram about the motivation behind studying famotidine...
Retrospective study (pre-print) finds Famotidine reduced risk of death (aHR = .29) or intubation (aHR = .40) in COVID-19 pts...
Famotidine Use is Associated with Improved Clinical Outcomes in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients: A Retrospective Cohort Study
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20086694v1
I understand. No problem. I was surprised you let it go on as long as it did. Politics is a toxic subject.
Tissue distribution of ACE2 receptor...
Expression of the SARS-CoV-2 cell receptor gene ACE2 in a wide variety of human tissues
https://idpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40249-020-00662-x
Blood thinners may improve survival among hospitalized COVID-19 patients
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/tmsh-btm050420.php
An emerging antiviral takes aim at COVID-19
https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/drug-development/emerging-antiviral-takes-aim-COVID-19/98/web/2020/05
Derek Lowe on mAbs from Netherlands & Israel...
Details of a New Anti-Coronovirus Neutralizing Antibody
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/06/details-of-a-new-anti-coronovirus-neutralizing-antibody
If a national stay-at-home order had been issued on March 13, infections could have been reduced by 63.2% and the growth of infections reversed by April 5 according to this study...
The Effect of Stay-at-Home Orders on COVID-19 Infections in the United States
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3576826
Re: Rutgers’ COVID-19 saliva test
More detail on the CRISPR test: 97% sensitivity and 100% specificity...
SHERLOCK-based one-step test provides rapid and sensitive COVID-19 detection
https://mcgovern.mit.edu/2020/05/05/sherlock-based-one-step-test-provides-rapid-and-sensitive-covid-19-detection/