Author: Biotech Express

Pharma exports have touched Rs 1,83,422 crore in 2021-22 against Rs 90,415 crore in 2013-14, the commerce ministry said on Sunday. Amidst the pandemic, the Indian Biopharma Industry, with over 300 companies, has witnessed a good growth of 13 per cent, 2 per cent less than the previous year’s 15 per cent growth rate. This growth was largely driven by performance of the Indian biopharma companies which have done very well as against multinational companies. As a result, the Indian Biopharma Industry has crossed the Rs 33,000 crore mark for the year 2020-21 over the previous year’s figure of Rs 29,176 crore.…

AstraZeneca topped off a very busy week with its first-quarter financial report, citing a total of $11.390 billion in revenue, a whopping increase of 60%. That was driven by the acquisition of Alexion and several contracts for Vaxzevria, its COVID-19 vaccine developed with the University of Oxford. The company also announced plans to open a new location in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This site will act as a strategic R&D center for the company in addition to being Alexion’s new corporate headquarters. It will house about 1,500 R&D, commercial and corporate staffers into a “single purpose-built space in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.” AstraZeneca closed its deal with Alexion in 2021,…

A new study found a correlation between an increase in emergency cardiovascular events among people under 40 years of age and the early months of Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine program. Published in the Nature journal, researchers utilized data from the Israel National Emergency Medical Services between 2019 and 2021 that evaluated emergency, or EMS, calls among 16- to 39-year-olds across Israel “with potential factors including COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates.” They found that there was a 25 percent increase in EMS calls between January 2021 to May 2021, as compared with the years 2019 and 2020. Israel, which primarily uses Pfizer’s…

Atal New India Challenge is a flagship program of Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog. The program aims to seek, select, support and nurture technology-based innovations that solve sectoral challenges of national importance and societal relevance. One of the primary goals of the ANIC program is to support innovations in areas critical to India’s development and growth – Education, Health, Water and Sanitation, Agriculture, Food Processing, Housing, Energy, Mobility, Space Application etc. Launching the Challenge, Dr S. Chandrasekar, Secretary, DST in his address said that Government will hand-hold the path breaking innovations and asked the start-ups to take up hard challenges.…

We should not force COVID vaccines on anyone when the evidence shows that naturally acquired immunity is equal to or more robust and superior to existing vaccines. Instead, we should respect the right of the bodily integrity of individuals to decide for themselves, said an article published in 2021. Public health officials and the medical establishment with the help of the politicized media are misleading the public with assertions that the COVID-19 shots provide greater protection than natural immunity. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, for example, was deceptive in her October 2020 published LANCET statement that “there is no evidence for…

A COVID-19 vaccine named Corbevax looked like a triumph for India’s burgeoning drug industry. Because its U.S. developers hadn’t claimed a patent on it, an Indian manufacturer named Biological E was able to sell the two-dose protein-based vaccine to the government at the extraordinarily low price of 145 rupees ($1.90) per dose. In March, the country began to give the shots to 12- to 14-year-olds, a group for which India did not yet have a licensed COVID-19 vaccine. But the celebration was quickly drowned out by questions over whether India’s drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), had…

Efforts to promote entrepreneurship in the Jammu and Kashmir region have got a major boost with the establishment of a BioNEST bio-incubation centre at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)’s Jammu-based, Indian Institute of Integrative Medicines (IIIM). Nestled within the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, the region is particularly rich in terms of medicinal and aromatic plants. It has immense potential for biotech startups, especially in areas such as essential oil products, medicinal mushrooms, nutraceutical products, herbal drugs, and the wellness industry. Enterprising ideas in the biotech sector need incubation support vastly different from the IT sector. They need a…

Kamal Pratap Singh According to the latest news article published on Business Today February 7, 2022, total 70,102 adverse events after vaccination are reported in India in which Covishield comprised 63,315 cases, followed by Covaxin at 6,757 and Sputnik at 30. Out of the total cases a total 1,013 fatalities are reported following the COVID-19 vaccines, 921 were after Covishield, 92 after Covaxin, and Sputnik reported zero such incidents, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare informed the Parliament. So we have seen that Covishield has highest rate of adverse event including number of deaths, but it is also important…

To better understand the level of intimidation, its effects, and the ways scientists cope with it, Science asked 9585 researchers who have published on COVID-19 to fill out an online survey about their experiences. Of 510 who responded, 38% reported at least one type of attack, ranging from insults to death threats, delivered on social media, by email or phone, or sometimes even in person. Those who were harassed described a range of effects on their lives, including workplace problems and mental health issues. The findings broadly align with other indications that harassment is hitting science and related fields. The…

Dr Seema Pavgi Upadhye, Krish Gupta We all know that plastics are one of the leading pollutants on the planet, from mountains to oceans large amounts of plastic waste is dumped which enters into food chains. A recent study on plastics “ Micro-plastics Found In Human Blood For First Time” has shattered the world since it is a direct health hazard when we are using plastic for our daily needs. Tiny particles of plastics, called micro plastic have been detected in the human blood for the first time by a group of researchers from the Netherlands. Microplastics are tiny pieces…