The World’s Most Loathed Industry Gave Us a Vaccine in Record Time

An anonymous reader shares a feature report: At the end of 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic started, the two best-known faces of the pharmaceutical business were the imprisoned Martin Shkreli and the lawsuit-laden opioid makers at Purdue Pharma. The rest of the industry was perhaps best known for the skyrocketing prices of its medicines. In a Gallup Poll of the public’s…

A fresh twist in chiral topology

The concept of chirality is well-established in science: when an object cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, both the object and its mirror image are called chiral. In the drug industry, for instance, more than 50% of the pharmaceutically active molecules used nowadays are chiral molecules. While one of the ‘enantiomers’ is life-saving, its counterpart with opposite handedness may be…

Former Labradoodle Breeder Was Tapped To Lead US Pandemic Task Force

Aram Roston and Marisa Taylor, reporting for Reuters: On January 21, the day the first U.S. case of coronavirus was reported, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services appeared on Fox News to report the latest on the disease as it ravaged China. Alex Azar, a 52-year-old lawyer and former drug industry executive, assured Americans the U.S. government…

70 Coronavirus Vaccines in Development, 3 Candidates Already Undergoing Human Trials

There are 70 coronavirus vaccines in development globally, with three candidates already being tested in human trials, according to the World Health Organization, as drugmakers race to find a cure for the deadly pathogen. From a report: The furthest along in the clinical process is an experimental vaccine developed by Hong Kong-listed CanSino Biologics and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, which…