💊 CEPI invests in Nipah research; Daewoong makes its way to Africa; Vaxxas’ new Australian Biomedical Facility

#366 | Cough syrup crisis continues; Paying more attention to ozone pollution; Losing our homes to climate change

Hello and happy Tuesday to all you lovely Kable readers. As of yesterday, we’ve officially curated and sent 365 Kables. It was a birthday of sorts. Okay maybe not, but we’ll take any reason to celebrate. Now that this baby is a whole year old, tell all your colleagues and friends about us as a birthday present, will you?

If you’re done clicking that share button, let’s get on with the news.

CEPI has announced investments worth up to $2.1 million in partnerships with Bangladesh’s Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research as well as Malaysia’s Universiti Malaya to improve our currently limited understanding of Nipah virus diversity and to support the development of vaccines against the virus.

After taking its new drug to South America and the Middle East, South Korea’s Daewoong Pharma is now entering the African market. The company has signed a $20.32 million export contract with Morocco’s Cooper Pharma for its new gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) drug Fexuclue. Daewoong plans to launch Fexuclue in Morocco in 2025.

The US-based biomedical company NovAccess Global is partnering with Thailand-based healthcare platform CKN Ventures to expand clinical data set access in Southeast Asia. The collab will use AI to support the development of personalized therapeutics and treatment protocols for the Precision Medicine Division of NovAccess, which focuses on immunotherapies for brain tumour patients.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University is advancing its partnership with China’s Tianjin Medical University to develop a scientific collaborative research platform in the next five years. Combining their research strengths, the institutions intend to use AI to construct a screening system for eye diseases, identify their causes, and come up with possible solutions.

Vaxxas has opened its first manufacturing plant in Brisbane, Australia. This biomedical facility will serve as the company’s global headquarters and will produce needle-free HD-MAP vaccines for future late-stage clinical trials and first commercial products. The company claims that its HD-MAP tech platform can improve the efficiency of vaccine immune responses as it helps deliver the vaccine directly to the immune cells just below the skin surface. Vaxxas’ tech for immunization against Covid and seasonal flu is currently in phase 1 human clinical trials.

In India, the heat wave is overwhelming hospitals, disrupting power, and filling up morgues in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The death toll has almost reached 170.

And finally, in Europe, the World Meteorological Organisation and the EU are warning that while the summer last year was the hottest ever recorded, leading to deaths in the thousands, such events are not isolated. Heat stress extremes are only set to increase in frequency and intensity.