STAT

JUNE 10, 2024

Moderna announced Monday that, in a Phase 3 clinical trial, its combination Covid-19 and influenza vaccine generated stronger immune responses in older adults than individual vaccines that target those viruses.

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STAT

MARCH 28, 2024

For scientists who study the human immune system, the penny dropped at different points in the early frenetic months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking back now, many marvel at the realization that they witnessed and were able to chronicle something no other scientists had ever actually seen.

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STAT

JANUARY 18, 2024

New research published Thursday in Science has identified proteins present in the blood of people with long Covid that could point the way to a much-needed diagnostic test and possibly to future therapeutic targets.

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Immunization Immunity 363

STAT

MARCH 21, 2024

This “summer of discovery,” as McKenna called it, brought him back to the immune system. McKenna discussed possibilities with his teenagers and Prometheus’ chief scientific officer.

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Immunization Immunity 336

STAT

MAY 21, 2024

Checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that unleash the immune system, have turned into blockbuster therapies that have transformed outcomes for some patients with deadly cancers.

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Immunization Immunity Drug Development 307

STAT

NOVEMBER 24, 2023

The evidence presented to the WHO team pointed to what’s sometimes called an immunity gap that was created by the pandemic. But a rapidly organized meeting Thursday between the World Health Organization and health officials in China assuaged much of that concern.

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Immunization Immunity 364

STAT

APRIL 11, 2023

No two people have quite the same immune system. And while that fact can make matching bone marrow and organ transplants torturously difficult, a Bay Area biotech believes it can harness immune diversity to treat a range of deadly cancers.

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Immunization Immunity 246

STAT

MARCH 22, 2024

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized a new antibody to protect immunocompromised individuals against Covid-19.    The drug, known as Pemgarda and marketed by the biotech Invivyd, is the first such drug to become available since the agency pulled AstraZeneca’s Evusheld off the market in January 2023.

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Immunization Immunity Drug Development 364

STAT

OCTOBER 25, 2022

That’s the premise behind Normunity, which launched Tuesday with $65 million from investors to develop a suite of drugs that it dubs “immune normalizers” to help restore the natural ability of the immune system’s T cells to infiltrate and destroy tumors.

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STAT

MAY 10, 2023

Prior research has shown that people with obesity have deficiencies in their “natural killer” cells, or NK cells — immune cells that help in combating cancer. A new small study suggests they may also be useful in fighting cancer.

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STAT

OCTOBER 23, 2023

The risks of severe neonatal morbidity, neonatal death, and admission to the neonatal intensive care unit were all significantly lower during the first month of birth in infants whose mothers were vaccinated against Covid-19, and protection against the virus continued for up to six months after birth, according to a new study published Monday in JAMA (..)

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STAT

OCTOBER 10, 2023

LONDON — In this case, it was neither the chicken nor the egg that came first. Rather, it started with some specially engineered cells in a lab. The chicken cells had had their genomes edited, not to correct a faulty mutation, but in an effort to blunt the bird flu virus.

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Immunization Immunity 360

STAT

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Alison Buttenheim was floored by a sign she saw in her doctor’s office when she went to get the first jab of the two-dose shingles vaccine to protect her against painful flare-ups of varicella zoster. “Medicare patients cannot receive Tdap or zoster vaccines here. They need to obtain [them] at their pharmacy.

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Vaccines Immunization Immunity 363

STAT

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Alison Sbrana was in the belly of an opera when her life changed. Down in the pit, surrounded by fellow orchestra members, she’d been straining to play her flute for half the show. As performers overhead enveloped the audience in arias, Sbrana felt like the Hulk was pulling on the tendons in the right side of her neck.

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Immunization Immunity 364

PharmaVoice

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

After dropping its neuroscience program earlier this year, the clinical-stage oncology company is doubling down on a candidate targeting the MAPK pathway.

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Immunization Immunity 246

STAT

JANUARY 24, 2024

This happens to people whose immune systems are compromised, whether through disease or treatment, leaving them vulnerable to infections that last weeks, months, or, in one known case, a year.

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Immunization Immunity 363

STAT

AUGUST 16, 2024

Pfizer and BioNTech said Friday that their combined mRNA vaccine candidate against influenza and Covid-19 showed a lower immune response against one type of influenza, influenza B, in a Phase 3 trial, a setback for the vaccine. ” Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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Vaccines Immunization Immunity 352

STAT

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

There’s symptom management, hopeful periods of remission often followed by relapses, but rarely a lasting fix for the way their immune system attacks healthy cells. If the immune system is an army, then those with conditions like lupus, multiple sclerosis, or rheumatoid arthritis are often fighting a never-ending war of friendly fire.

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Immunization Immunity 363

STAT

MAY 8, 2024

Tolerance is the holy grail in calming autoimmune disease, a truce in the immune system’s faulty battle against the body’s own fabric. In type 1 diabetes, immune fighters attack beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone that controls glucose levels in the blood.

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STAT

MARCH 27, 2024

New research shows that certain bacteria can alter antibodies so much that they’re unrecognizable to the body’s defenses — potentially leading to immune friendly fire. The bacteria, called Akkermansia muciniphila, can strip the sugar coating from IgA antibodies, immune proteins abundant in the gut.

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Immunization Immunity 352

PharmaVoice

JULY 14, 2022

The company’s chief medical officer discusses its lead candidate and how it fits into wider oncology trends.

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Immunization Immunity 264

STAT

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

Rheumatology — the study of immune-system-driven diseases of the bones, joints, muscles, and in-betweens — has inherited plenty of hand-me-downs from cancer research. For example, there are ways of squelching an immune system in order to shrink certain kinds of cancerous tumors.

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Immunization Immunity 345

STAT

JANUARY 30, 2024

They had developed polymer nanoparticles that could mimic dying cells, which the immune system won’t attack, but will naturally pull from the bloodstream and throw into the body’s waste collection and recycling systems — the spleen and liver — for disposal. Puisis, meanwhile, found it hard to believe.

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Immunization Immunity 297

STAT

OCTOBER 14, 2024

Companies that are developing new medicines for autoimmune conditions, as well as other immune system disorders, have brought in more money and closed more deals so far this year than most other areas, including the cardiometabolic field, data from investment bank Oppenheimer show.

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Immunization Immunity Drug Development 363

STAT

MAY 22, 2024

Biogen is joining the industry’s fervor over immune and inflammatory disease drug development with a new acquisition. HI-Bio, which is based in San Francisco, is developing therapies for immune-mediated diseases like primary membranous nephropathy and IgA nephropathy, both of which impact kidney function. The Cambridge, Mass.,

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STAT

APRIL 4, 2024

Many of the effects of climate change play out at a very large scale: Heatwaves that grip entire continents. Flooding that submerges vast swaths of island nations and continental coastal areas. Other effects are far less visible because they’re taking place inside people’s bodies. That doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

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Pharma Times

MAY 2, 2024

Bacteroides fragilis in the gut improves immunity and immunotherapy treatment responses

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Immunization Immunity 124

STAT

JUNE 27, 2024

Supreme Court rejected a controversial bankruptcy deal in which the owners of Purdue Pharma sought to contribute up to $6 billion in exchange for immunity from further lawsuits. The immunity had been a huge sticking point and prevented the settlement, which was first approved by a bankruptcy judge three years ago, from being finalized.

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Immunization Immunity 363

STAT

AUGUST 21, 2023

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a Pfizer vaccine that aims to protect newborns against RSV by vaccinating pregnant people in the latter part of pregnancy. The vaccine, Abrysvo, has also been approved for use in adults 60 and older to protect them against respiratory syncytial virus. Read the rest…

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Vaccines Immunization Immunity 246

STAT

NOVEMBER 24, 2022

An experimental influenza vaccine developed using messenger RNA technology appears capable of inducing what should be a protective immune response against all known subtypes of flu, at least in animals. If the work is translated into humans it could turn out to be a version of a long-sought universal vaccine.

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STAT

OCTOBER 19, 2022

The phrase “Black Death mass burial site” tends to evoke images of haphazard piles of diseased deceased like the “bring out your dead” Monty Python scene.

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Immunization Immunity 263

Pharma Times

MAY 30, 2024

Affecting the immune system, various forms of SCID are estimated to affect one in 75,000 to 100,000 newborns

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STAT

SEPTEMBER 27, 2024

Dupixent is already a blockbuster therapy for a range of immune-mediated diseases, but the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease greatly expands its reach — and could give it an edge over rival treatments in development. There are 300,000 such people in the U.S.,

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STAT

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

It’s still not clear why so many positions were left unfilled on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. STAT reported on the vacancies , which had flummoxed public health experts in the country, last week. Read the rest…

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STAT

JANUARY 8, 2024

Merck announced Monday it will acquire Harpoon Therapeutics and its pipeline of immune-based cancer drugs for $680 million. Keytruda, a PD-(L)1 inhibitor, works by turning off a “brake” on T cells, allowing roving immune cells to attack tumors. That could come as soon as 2028.

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Immunization Immunity 312

STAT

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

The rationale for that urgency is this: An unexplained H5 infection raises the possibility of person-to-person spread of a flu virus that has never before circulated in humans, and to which people would not have immunity. And this with a dangerous flu virus that scientists have long feared could someday trigger a pandemic.

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Immunization Immunity 364

STAT

MARCH 27, 2024

A new study out of Germany gives it a shot, offering up three MS subtypes based on immune markers found in patients’ blood — each group with slightly different disease progression. Read the rest…

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