Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

"Several of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies are fighting shareholder proposals to force them to disclose information on their use of a controversial patent strategy that can delay rivals from launching cheaper versions of blockbuster drugs.

A coalition of ethical investors have asked Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Gilead, Amgen, Regeneron, Bristol Myers Squibb and AbbVie to publish a report on the process they follow when applying for multiple patents on a single drug."

https://www.ft.com/content/c5498e67-a48f-4adc-b85f-7bf1a0d400f6

'The combination test correctly identified 99 percent of negative and 90 percent of positive flu A samples, according to the F.D.A. It also detected 100 percent of the negative and 88 percent of the positive Covid samples. The agency said it expected the company to continue to test on the flu B strain, which was not prevalent this year.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/24/health/covid-flu-test-fda.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Health

'After a father and daughter were diagnosed with bird flu, officials in Cambodia scrambled to test nearly a dozen of their contacts for infection the H5N1 virus, which has been causing mass die-offs of birds worldwide. The daughter, an 11-year-old, has died, but the World Health Organization said on Friday that 11 contacts have so far tested negative for the infection.'

https://www.nytimes.com/explain/2023/bird-flu-cambodia-death?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Health

'The trafficking of monkeys, primarily long-tailed macaques, has become a growing concern in the region since Covid. In March 2020, China suspended the export of macaques, disrupting the supply of monkeys to laboratories in the US and creating a shortage that traffickers have sought to exploit, say animal rights experts.

Prior to the pandemic, trafficking of long-tailed macaques wasn’t a significant problem, said Wiek. “The price of long-tailed macaques on the illegal wildlife market was really low – $20 or $30 per piece. I wouldn’t call that a really sustainable kind of wildlife trade. But now the prices went up to five to 10 times more.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/26/thailands-missing-monkeys-why-did-hundreds-of-rhesus-macaques-vanish-from-a-temple

"Here we report a murine model that expresses tumor-like levels of human APOBEC3B after Cre-mediated recombination. Animals appear to develop normally with full-body expression of APOBEC3B. However, adult males manifest infertility and older animals of both sexes show accelerated rates of tumorigenesis (mostly lymphomas or hepatocellular carcinomas)"

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.24.529970v1

'The N.I.H. said its scientists, some of whom had been collaborating for years with Moderna, had helped to design that sequence. Moderna also received nearly $10 billion in taxpayer funding to develop and test the vaccine, and to provide doses to the federal government. The company has sold roughly $36 billion worth of coronavirus vaccines worldwide.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/science/moderna-covid-vaccine-patent-nih.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Science