Clene Nanomedicine was awarded a crucial patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its patented clean-surfaced gold nanocrystals used for treating patients with multiple sclerosis.

Convalescent plasma (CP) is plasma obtained from patients who have recovered from an infectious illness and thus generated antibodies to the disease. It can be used as an emergency measure when other treatments are not available. Unlike recombinant monoclonal antibodies engineered to bind to a specific target, CP possesses a range of antibodies to a viral antigen that provide better coverage by interacting with different parts of that antigen, according to Vu L. Truong, founder, CEO, and director at Aridis Pharmaceuticals.

French biotech Valneva has started manufacturing its vaccine candidate in Scotland, the U.K. government announced Thursday.

The move follows a multi-million-pound joint investment in the facility in Livingston, West Lothian, by the U.K. government in 2020 as part of an in-principle agreement to secure early access to Valneva’s first 60 million vaccine doses, with an option to acquire a further 130 million if the jab is approved.

“J.P. Morgan and the meetings around J.P. Morgan are such a fun week for us in the industry typically, but I have to be blunt: This week has been extra busy. I think the Zoom environment, and the virtual environment, has created an efficiency that’s good for everybody, except the folks that have to present the data because we have to present every 30 minutes without bio breaks,” OncoCyte Corp. President and Chief Executive Officer Ronnie Andrews told BioSpace.

After years working under the radar, Nirogy Therapeutics is officially launching with $16.5 million and a mission to drug a family of membrane proteins called solute carriers. The proceeds will see the company’s lead cancer program through phase 1, CEO Vincent Sandanayaka, Ph.D., said.

INmune Bio, Inc., who developed the drug, noted that the analysis highlighted an approximate two-fold reduction in the neurodegeneration markers visinin-like protein 1 (VILIP-1) and neurofilament light (NFL), as well as an almost three-fold change in contactin-2 and a half-fold change in neurogranin, both proteins associated with synaptic plasticity. These improvements were sustained through the nine-month timepoint (the total length of the study so far).

When SARS-CoV-2 emerged on to the global stage in early 2020, many pharma groups leapt into action. After receiving the genetic code of the emerging coronavirus from researchers in Australia and China in mid-January, these companies signed deals and started to apply existing technology – often used for previous coronaviruses like SARS and MERS – to develop vaccines targeting the S protein used by SARS-CoV-2 to infect human cells.