Author: Biotech Express

On June 22, 2021, the Kenya National Biosafety Authority (NBA) approved the environmental release of genetically modified (GM) cassava event 4046, resistant to cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) developed by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO). The NBA Board approved the application as stated in the decision document dated June 16, 2021, following  the necessary review in accordance with the country’s Biosafety Act.KALRO scientists have been developing CBSD-resistant cassava varieties using event 4046 under regulated confined field trial conditions authorized by NBA. The approval paves way for conducting national performance trials of these varieties before registration and release…

A study that touted phototherapy as a way to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has been retracted after Elisabeth Bik noted a litany of concerns about the article, from duplications in the figures to the authors’ failure to disclose conflicts of interest. The article, “Methylene blue photochemical treatment as a reliable SARS-CoV-2 plasma virus inactivation method for blood safety and convalescent plasma therapy for COVID-19,” appeared in mid-April in BMC Infectious Diseases, a Springer Nature title. The authors listed affiliations with various institutions in China, including a company called Boxin (Beijing) Biotechnology Development LTD, which helped fund the study — more…

Researchers from India and Canada documented the trends linked to genetically modified (GM) foods, policies, and consumer acceptance after analyzing hundreds of publications in the past 20 years. Their analyses led to the conclusion that consumer perception is affected by factors such as government decisions, how benefits are communicated, and the media. A total of 543 journal articles from 1981 to 2021 were bibliographically analyzed using the Web of Science database and BibExcel and VOSviewer visualization software tools to utilize the topic basis search of phrases related to GM food preference and perception. The objective was to map the trends…

The New York Times reported last week that the company paid $51,000 to sponsor the special edition of the journal, including a $6,500 open-access fee to make it freely available to the public. Three editorial board members resigned over the arrangement. The e-cigarette company Juul Labs funded a special issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior, which dedicated its entire May/June issue to 11 articles authored by Juul scientists or contractors that on the whole found reductions in adult smoking rates as smokers switched to electronic nicotine products. The 11 research articles published in the American Journal of Health…

Pfizer and partner BioNTech plan to ask U.S. and European regulators within weeks to authorize a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine, based on evidence of greater risk of infection six months after inoculation and the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said, however, in a joint statement that Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster COVID-19 shot at this time. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it was too early to determine whether more than the two shots…

More than half of Dutch scientists regularly engage in questionable research practices, such as hiding flaws in their research design or selectively citing literature, according to a new study. And one in 12 admitted to committing a more serious form of research misconduct within the past 3 years: the fabrication or falsification of research results. This rate of 8% for outright fraud was more than double that reported in previous studies. Organizers of the Dutch National Survey on Research Integrity, the largest of its kind to date, took special precautions to guarantee the anonymity of respondents for these sensitive questions,…

French pharmaceutical Sanofi and its British partner GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on Thursday said they have received the approval of the drugs controller general of India to conduct part of the global phase-3 efficacy trial of their jointly developed covid-19 vaccine in India. This will be the first such global trial for a foreign covid-19 vaccine to be conducted in India. We believe our covid-19 adjuvanted, recombinant vaccine can make a significant contribution to the ongoing fight against covid-19 and are committed to initiating our clinical programme in India, at the earliest,” said Annapurna Das, country head of Sanofi Pasteur India. In…

Mankind Pharma has received the licence to manufacture and market oral 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) from Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the company said on Thursday. The drug is used for the treatment of COVID-19. It will manufacture the product at its facilities in Visakhapatnam and Himachal Pradesh, it added. The office of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) on May 1 had permitted the emergency use of 2-DG as an adjunct treatment for moderate to severe COVID-19 patients, Mankind Pharma said. Bajaj Healthcare Limited (BHL) also announced that it has received license from DRDO to manufacture 2-DG drug used…

Union minister Dr Harsh Vardhan resigned from the post of health minister ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s big Cabinet reshuffle. Whether he will stay on as the science and technology minister is not immediately clear. Why Modi Govt has removed Dr Vardhan is not clear but his absent from press conference and accountability, futile contradictions with opposition and blunt statement about science (chocolate and covid), alliance with Baba Ramdev etc. have been highly criticized by masses. Many people on twitter were asking for his resignation from a very long time. Mansukh Mandavaiya was born in a small village named…

According to The BMJ’s recent news investigation, the documents revealed that regulators reviewing vaccine candidates had concerns about truncated messenger RNA (mRNA) in early batches of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine. These early batches developed for commercial production had about 55% intact mRNA, a lower percentage than in clinical trial batches, with uncertain implications. Leaked documents show that some early commercial batches of Pfizer-BioNTech’s covid-19 vaccine had lower than expected levels of intact mRNA, prompting wider questions about how to assess this novel vaccine platform.According to the news story’s author, journalist Serena Tinari, Pfizer, the EMA, and Health Canada, as well as…