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In the first head-to-head comparison of the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, researchers examined the electronic health records of veterans who had received each vaccine. Both vaccines were highly effective in preventing COVID-19 outcomes such as documented infection, hospitalization, and death.

Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that it is working with Pfizer to create innovative, cloud-based solutions with the potential to improve how new medicines are developed, manufactured, and distributed for testing in clinical trials. The companies are exploring these advances through their newly created Pfizer Amazon Collaboration Team (PACT) initiative,

The first peer-reviewed study in North America examining the timing between the first and second doses of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines shows that a longer dose interval leads to a stronger immune response. The study is funded by the Government of Canada through its COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF).

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) plc today launched Target the Future, an international, multi-year initiative dedicated to advancing innovation and addressing key needs in the multiple myeloma community. The programme will provide education on progress in the field of multiple myeloma, identify key challenges the community faces, and facilitate solutions to help create a better future for patients, their caregivers and loved ones.

From May 23 to August 13, 2021, the Institut Pasteur, in partnership with the French National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM), Santé publique France and the Ipsos institute, conducted the fourth part of the ComCor epidemiological study on circumstances and places of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in France. The aim of the study was to identify the socio-demographic factors, places visited and behaviors associated with a higher risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2.

On 26 November 2021, WHO designated the variant B.1.1.529 a variant of concern, named Omicron, on the advice of WHO's Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE). This decision was based on the evidence presented to the TAG-VE that Omicron has several mutations that may have an impact on how it behaves, for example, on how easily it spreads or the severity of illness it causes.

Sanofi announced an equity investment of $180 million and a new strategic collaboration with Owkin comprised of discovery and development programmes in four exclusive types of cancer, with a total payment of $90 million for three years plus additional research milestone-based payments. Owkin, an artificial intelligence (AI) and precision medicine company, builds best-in-class predictive biomedical AI models and robust data sets.

A combination of two targeted cancer drugs showed unprecedented, "clinically meaningful" activity in patients with highly malignant brain tumors that carried a rare genetic mutation, according to a clinical trial report by investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The drug combination, which blocked an overactive cell-growth signaling pathway, shrank tumors by 50% or more in one-third of 45 patients with hard-to-treat high-grade gliomas, including glioblastomas, the most aggressive brain tumor.

The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) is further enabling cancer research worldwide by making a massive collection of cancer data available for analysis via Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform. Providing secure, controlled access to ICGC genomic and clinical data on Azure will mitigate the need for researchers to obtain massive amounts of storage and computing power within their home institutions, meaning that more researchers will be able to use the data.

Aspirin use is associated with a 26% raised risk of heart failure in people with at least one predisposing factor for the condition. That’s the finding of a study published today in ESC Heart Failure, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Predisposing factors included smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The population's immunity to SARS-CoV-2, achieved either through infection or vaccination, is crucial to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. A team of researchers led by the University of Zurich (UZH) has now discovered another component that contributes to SARS-CoV-2 immunity - previous antibody responses to other, harmless coronaviruses.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded the emergency use authorization (EUA) of a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to include individuals 18 years of age and older. The booster dose is to be administered at least six months after completion of the primary series, and is the same dosage strength as the doses in the primary series.

GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) and Vir Biotechnology, Inc. (Nasdaq: VIR) announced US government contracts totalling approximately $1 billion[1] (USD) to purchase sotrovimab, an investigational monoclonal antibody for the early treatment of COVID-19, which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in May 2021.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) today announced an agreement with the U.S. government to supply 10 million treatment courses of its investigational COVID-19 oral antiviral candidate, PAXLOVID™ (PF-07321332; ritonavir), subject to regulatory authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). If approved or authorized, PAXLOVID, which originated in Pfizer's laboratories, would be the first oral antiviral of its kind, a 3CL protease inhibitor specifically designed to combat SARS-CoV-2.

9 December, 2021. 10AM EST, 3PM GMT, 4PM CET. Virtual Event.
Medical affairs teams are challenged by rising costs and accelerated timelines - and hampered by inefficiency throughout the insight gathering process. These breakdowns occur before a single insight is collected: by engaging with the wrong KOLs, medical affairs won't access the right strategic insights while wasting time and effort.

9 December, 2021. 10AM EST, 3PM GMT, 4PM CET. Virtual Event.
Medical affairs teams are challenged by rising costs and accelerated timelines - and hampered by inefficiency throughout the insight gathering process. These breakdowns occur before a single insight is collected: by engaging with the wrong KOLs, medical affairs won't access the right strategic insights while wasting time and effort.

For the past year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to engulf the globe, fueled in part by novel variants and the uneven distribution of vaccines. Every day, hundreds of thousands of new COVID-19 cases and thousands of new deaths are still being reported worldwide, creating a need for drugs that can combat the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.

Mount Sinai researchers have developed a new model that uses DNA and RNA sequencing data from hundreds of patients to identify specific genes and genetic alterations responsible for never-before-defined subtypes of a blood cancer called multiple myeloma. They also identified potential targeted treatments based on the findings, as reported in Science Advances in November.

AstraZeneca and its partners have released for supply two billion doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to more than 170 countries across every continent on the planet in the last 11 months.

Approximately two-thirds of these have gone to low- and lower-middle-income countries, including more than 175 million doses delivered to 130 countries through the COVAX Facility.

Drinking coffee or tea may be associated with a lower risk of stroke and dementia, according to a study of healthy individuals aged 50-74 publishing November 16th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine. Drinking coffee was also associated with a lower risk of post-stroke dementia.