By The Defender Staff
Scientists Are Working on a Hantavirus Vaccine — But It’s Likely Years Away
The hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship brings a new focus to efforts to develop a vaccine to prevent the virus. Experts say hantavirus vaccine efforts have repeatedly stalled, in part because outbreaks tend to occur sporadically and disproportionately affect poorer countries where there is less incentive for drugmakers to invest.
“Our funding agencies don’t put a lot of money into this, because it’s likely not to cause the next epidemic or pandemic,” said Sabra Klein, a professor in the molecular microbiology and immunology department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “But these are hemorrhagic fever viruses, so when they occur, they’re scary, and they do wreak havoc.”
The founders of EnsiliTech, a U.K.-based biotech company, began work on the vaccine 15 years ago. “We looked at hantavirus and saw it was pretty neglected,” said Matt Slade, a company co-founder and its chief of staff. “There wasn’t really any work in the sector.”
Germany: BioNTech Shutting Down Covid Vaccine Production
The Mainz-based company BioNTech that shot to global notoriety amid the COVID-19 pandemic for its work on one of the first mRNA coronavirus vaccines has announced drastic restructuring plans. The company is winding down its COVID vaccine production entirely, leaving the production to US partner Pfizer going forward. “In the course of this year we will produce the last doses here in Germany,” a company spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency.
Amid the restructuring, the company is closing production centers in Idar-Oberstein, in Marburg, in Singapore in Asia, and another German facility in Tübingen belonging to the CureVac rival company that BioNTech fully took over as of late 2025 after a lengthy acquisition process.
The company said that the closures should be completed by the end of 2027, and that it would look into possibilities to sell the affected facilities.
RFK Jr. Defends Hepatitis B Vaccine Rollback at Cleveland Forum
A family physician pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Thursday on one of the most contentious decisions of his tenure — the rollback of a longstanding recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth. The question at Cleveland’s City Club came from Dr. Patricia Kellner, who said she has practiced family medicine for 40 years.
Invoking Kennedy’s disclosure earlier in the forum that he had struggled with heroin addiction, she noted that hepatitis B is more common among drug users, can be asymptomatic, and that some of her patients only learned they had it when they developed liver cancer. “The only way to prevent hepatitis B is to vaccinate,” she said, “and the best way to vaccinate against hepatitis B is by starting with a birth dose. So why are you opposed to a birth dose of hepatitis B?”
Kennedy defended the policy change, arguing it was driven by concerns about inadequate safety testing. He said one of the two available vaccines had been safety tested for four days and the other for five, neither against a placebo. “That’s not a safety study,” said Kennedy. “That is nothing.”
Antibiotic Resistance Is Rising in Invasive E Coli Found in U.S. Newborns, Study Finds
An analysis of invasive Escherichia coli samples from newborns at a US pediatric hospital found rising rates of resistance to recommended antibiotics, researchers reported today in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. For the study, researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and Children’s Mercy Hospital Kansas City identified and analyzed E coli isolated from blood cultures of newborns at the hospital from 2006 to 2021.
E coli is a major neonatal pathogen in the United States, and leading cause of sepsis in newborns. The researchers wanted to investigate the clinical characteristics of newborns with E coli bacteremia (bacteria in the blood), and the pattern of antibiotic resistance in E coli isolates over time. “This knowledge is crucial to develop effective preventative and treatment strategies for this devastating disease,” the researchers wrote.
A Bird Flu Vaccine for Humans Is Being Trialled — Here’s How It Works
The first ever avian influenza vaccine recently started trials in the UK. This marks a milestone in the prevention of bird flu infections in humans. The vaccine targets the H5N1 flu strain, which causes severe infections in bird populations worldwide. However, this strain of bird flu virus is also able to spread to humans in rare cases through direct contact with infected birds or poultry products.
This latest trial hopes to test the vaccine in people who are most at risk of acquiring bird flu. This includes people who work in poultry industry and people who are above 65 years of age. This new bird flu vaccine is an mRNA-based vaccine. This is the same technology that was used in some COVID vaccines.
Online Platform Agrees to Stop Selling GLP-1 Drugs to U.S. Customers
An international online platform settled with the Connecticut attorney general’s office Wednesday and agreed to stop selling GLP-1 weight-loss medications to customers in the United States, according to a press release from the attorney general’s office. The platform, called Made-in-China, had sold so-called “research grade” GLP-1 drugs without prescriptions or any medical oversight, which are not approved for human use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to consumers without prescriptions, according to the press release.
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy are FDA-approved for weight loss, but the federal agency has raised concerns about unapproved versions that have not undergone “review for safety, effectiveness and quality” and the risks they may pose to consumers.
The drugs sold on Made-In-China were marketed as generic versions of popular, brand-name weight loss medications such as Mounjaro, Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound, but the claims were often false, and the drugs “contained impurities, potential bacterial contamination, and inconsistent quantities of active ingredients, which can result in medication overdoses,” according to the attorney general’s office.
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IPAK-EDU is grateful to The Defender as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More
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