The work to develop a rapid COVID-19 test is one of the most important challenges we face in the world today. Over 160 companies worldwide are in pursuit. Society is under extreme pressure from this pandemic. Accurate testing is the cornerstone of a return to some level of normalcy and economic recovery. The Virus Project commissioned a comprehensive report on COVID-19 testing that profiles the overall market and more than 160 companies worldwide seeking regulatory approval. The market for tests could reach $50 billion annually. Of particular interest is a rapid, inexpensive daily test to identify the contagious. Research has indicated…
Author: Brett Johnson
Researchers are working on a testing system that would require a simple exhaled breath. Such a test would serve as an alternative to current tests that are expensive, can take a long time to get results, and require specialized personnel to do the sampling and to analyze the results. According to the scientist leading this work, “Breath analysis is not really a technique that is used widely in the medical field yet, so it is considered early-stage work. We have developed a sensor device that detects nitric oxide and VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in breath and can be used to…
A Covid-19 test that processes saliva samples and does not require special swabs or collection devices received emergency-use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Saturday. SalivaDirect test is expected to be priced at $10 per sample. Cheap, fast saliva-based test could boost testing frequency. Research for the test was done by Yale University’s School of Public Health and was partly funded by the National Basketball Association and the union representing NBA players. The rapid detection test, known as SalivaDirect, “is groundbreaking in terms of efficiency and avoiding shortages of crucial test components like reagents,” FDA Commissioner Stephen…
SUMMARY: NPR reports more than 8 in 10 supported aggressive new measures by the federal government, including expanded testing are needed. The author suggests we have relied on poorly coordinated efforts among 50 states and thousands of local jurisdictions to solve a national problem. “The United States is not currently on course to get control of this epidemic,” said a Johns Hopkins University report. “It is time to reset.”. The writer suggests testing every American once a week for four weeks. There’s a model for this idea. In March, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT converted its lab into a…
Opinion in the Wall Street Journal describes a Covid-19 therapy using “medicinal signaling cells,” or MSCs, which are found on blood vessels throughout the body. These cells eliminate the virus, calm the immune overreaction known as a cytokine storm, and repair damaged lung tissue. According to the author who is a co-founder of a company in this space, this combination is offered by no other drug, making this a regenerative medicine that could be as revolutionary as Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. NOTE: Share price of Osiris (the company developing this technology) rose dramatically after this article appeared, moving from .03…
Current tests for active infection of COVID-19 are given long after the infected person has stopped transmitting making results virtually useless for public-health efforts to contain the pandemic. Harvard professor makes the case that our current approach is all wrong. The vast majority of PCR positive tests we currently collect are finding people for whom we can’t even act because they are done transmitting and that rapid and inexpensive tests even with low sensitivity can better address the challenge. FDA policy is slowing these tests to market. AT THE MOMENT, THE UNITED STATES has no semblance of public-health testing” for…
SUMMARY: The first injection for Moderna’s vaccine trail in partnership with the National Institutes of Health aims to enroll about 30,000 people from 89 widely dispersed sites across the U.S. It is the first possible coronavirus vaccine to enter a phase three trial in the U.S. If the vaccine remains on track, Moderna previously said it will be able to deliver “approximately 500 million doses per year, and possibly up to 1 billion doses per year” starting in 2021.The company announced earlier this month that healthy adults whowere given the vaccine in the phase one trial tolerated it generally well and all…
A COVID-19 vaccine called AZD1222 being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford showed “robust immune responses” in early-stage clinical trials neutralizing antibody responses in 91 percent of the participants who received a single dose of AZD1222 and 100 percent of the participants who received the booster dose. The United States announced it secured 300 million doses of the experimental vaccine—nearly one-third of the first one billion doses the drug maker plans to produce. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services pledged up to $1.2 billion to accelerate the program. Though these early trial results show that the vaccine induced a…