Sanofi Pasteur Inc., Swiftwater, Pennsylvania, won a $621,134,986 federal contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for pediatric influenza vaccines.
Saturday, January 12, 2019
CANbridge Pharmaceuticals expands partnership with Wuxi
Chinas CANbridge Pharmaceuticals has expanded its alliance with WuXi Biologics for the discovery, development and commercialisation of four additional drug candidates to potentially treat rare genetic chronic diseases.
As per the agreement, CANbridge holds exclusive regional or global rights to these drug candidates. In turn, WuXi Biologics will receive upfront and milestone payments as well as royalties.
WuXi Biologics will act as the exclusive clinical and primary commercial supplier for all the programmes.
CANbridge Pharmaceuticals founder, chairman and CEO James Xue said: With this expansion of our partnership with WuXi Biologics, CANbridge continues to broaden our presence in rare disease, with a goal of bringing to the market treatments that are developed in China.
These four new drug candidates target important rare disease indications for which there are either no available treatments in China or treatments with poor outcomes.
These candidates are next-generation therapies directed at medically-validated biological targets.
CANbridge and WuXi Biologics initially partnered in October last year to develop and commercialise a range of biotherapeutics targeting rare diseases.
The partnership combines CANbridges clinical, regulatory and commercial expertise with WuXis drug discovery, development and manufacturing capabilities.
First investigational New Drug (IND) application for the lead rare disease candidate from this programme is expected to be submitted later this year in China.
In the future, the partners also intend to develop the therapeutics on a global basis.
Pfizer inks tech deal with Viet Nam company
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced on Thursday it has signed a deal with Medochemie to transfer technology to manufacture its innovative medicines in Viet Nam.
Pfizer said it would bring its global technologies and operations platforms of hard-to-make products such as sterile injectables to Viet Nam and help raise local manufacturing standards to that of international markets.
Under the agreement, Medochemie, which has a plant in Bnh Dng Province, will make Pfizers anti-infective, cardiovascular, and pain drugs.
Commenting on the partnership, Bradley Allen Silcox, chief representative of Pfizer Thailand in Viet Nam, said: We are grateful to the Ministry of Health of Viet Nam and the Government of Viet Nam for their vision to improve the capacity and capability of the pharmaceutical sector, and for creating an eco-stem that allows patients the quality of care and treatment.
Daphne Pittas, director of Medochemie, said: This partnership gives an impetus to Viet Nams pharmaceutical industry capability for the manufacture of complex medicines such as oral dosages and injectable cephalosporin.
Medochemie strongly believes in and will continue to support the scientific and technological advancement of the Vietnamese pharmaceutical sector.
Viet Nam is a rapidly developing market with a population of 95 million as of 2017. Steady economic growth and an expansion of the middle income have increased demand for high-quality healthcare goods and services, especially medicines, the two companies said in press release.
Jonathan Wood & Associates to hold a forum
11th Annual T-Cell Lymphoma Forum will be held in La Jolla, CA on January 10-12.
Friday, January 11, 2019
BlackRock takes 11.7% passive stake in Medpace
BlackRock dsclosed an 11.7% passive stake. The stake represents over 4.1M shares. The filing with the SEC does not allow for activism.
American Psych Assn officially labels ‘traditional masculinity’ as ‘harmful’
The American Psychological Association has issued its first official warning against toxic masculinity.
The new “Guidelines for the Psychological Practice with Boys and Men,” marks the first-ever report published by the association aimed at helping practitioners care for their male patients “despite social forces that can harm mental health.”
Citing more than 40 years of research, the APA warns against the “masculinity ideology,” which it defines as “a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure risk and violence.”
“Traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development, constrain their behavior, result in gender role strain and gender role conflict and negatively influence mental health and physical health,” according to the 36-page report, featured in January’s issue of Monitor on Psychology.
Conforming to the norms of the “masculinity ideology” can result in suppressing emotions and masking distress in young boys as well more risk-taking and aggressive behavior and a lack of willingness to seek out help. The report additionally contends this can lead to traits like homophobia and pave the way for sexual harassment, bullying and violence against others and themselves.
The APA also invoked a series of sobering statistics to emphasize that “traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.”
For example, despite being four times more likely to die of suicide than women, men are significantly less likely to be diagnosed with internalizing disorders because they don’t “conform to traditional stereotypes about men’s emotionality.” Men in the United States also commit an estimated 90 percent more homicides than women and are also much more likely to be arrested for domestic violence.
Despite its warnings, the APA also encouraged men to embrace the positive aspects of traditional masculinity, like leadership and courage.
“Though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged upon by patriarchy,” says Ronald F. Levant, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and co-editor of the APA volume “The Psychology of Men and Masculinities.”
“Guidelines for the Psychological Practice with Boys and Men” additionally calls on those treating male patient to recognize their own bias and urges them to address how “power privilege and sexism work, both by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in their narrow roles.”
New binding partner for amyloid precursor protein discovered
An international team of researchers has discovered a new binding partner for amyloid precursor protein (APP)—a neurotransmitter called GABABR1a. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of a nonpathogenic version of APP and what they found. Martin Korte with Technische Universität Braunschweig has written a Perspective piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.
APP is well-known for the role it plays in the development of Alzheimer’s disease—it is torn apart by an enzyme, resulting in the formation of amyloid β, which aggregates into the notorious clumps in the brain that that are the hallmark of the disease. As part of the study of neurological disorders, scientists have been working to understand what APP does in the brain prior to its role in Alzheimer’s.
Prior research has shown that at least one version of APP is involved in balancing the firing of neurons by reducing the release of neurotransmitters sent between neurons. In this new effort, the researchers report discovering that APP works with a specific transmitter called GABABR1a as part of this process.
In their study, the researchers looked at a form of APP that resides in the membranes of neurons and another that is secreted by neurons. They note that GABABR1a belongs to the latter group. The team was specifically looking for APP bindingpartners in rat synapses (taken from the hippocampus). The process involved removing transmitters one at a time and watching changes in electrical output as they were introduced to APP. They found that when APP and GABABR1a were binding, there was a reduction in the release of the neurotransmitter. This suggested that the two are binding partners that play a role in the electrical firing involved with neuronal communications.
The team plans to continue their study of both APP and GABABR1a hoping to learn more about which cell types are typically involved and what brain parts. There is also more work to be done to determine the nature of other kinds of APP and what they do—and there also lies the possibility of using new knowledge learned about APP to develop therapies for brain disorders.
Explore further
More information: Heather C. Rice et al. Secreted amyloid-β precursor protein functions as a GABABR1a ligand to modulate synaptic transmission, Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao4827
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