💊 Oxford malaria shot gets WHO pre-qualification; Sanofi joins Janssen in the fight against E. coli; Soil heat an underestimated risk

#441 | Dengue breaks records in Bangladesh; J&J to break ground on Costa Rica plant; Viatris breaks up with three business units

Hello there. Welcome back to The Kable. In Zimbabwe, the Medicines Control Authority has revoked 6 wholesale dealers’ permits and 4 people’s licenses for promoting the abuse of Histalix, a locally-made, codeine-containing cough mixture. The mixture was sold illegally within the country and also exported.

This piece in The Conversation explains why South African men are more likely to develop and die of TB than women. Heavy alcohol use, smoking, and undernutrition might have some role to play. Lower testing rates and delays in starting treatment also contribute to higher mortality rates.

Within the framework of its Regional Platform to Advance the Manufacturing of Vaccines and other Health Technologies, PAHO has entered an agreement with Argentina to strengthen and increase capacities for the development and production of mRNA vaccines for regional use. With financial support from the Canadian Global Initiative for Vaccine Equity, PAHO will provide the Dr. Carlos Malbrán National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes with equipment and other resources needed to produce lipid nanoparticles, essential to the production of mRNA vaccines.

Johnson & Johnson MedTech is building a manufacturing facility in Costa Rica – the largest investment J&J MedTech has ever made outside the US.

In Chile, drug monitoring software provider PrecisePK is partnering with Clínica Andes Salud Concepción to advance precision medicine, improve clinical outcomes, and elevate patient experiences in South America.

Over in the Middle East, Oman has proposed integrating specialised health services and launching telemedicine clinics for rare diseases in the GCC countries. The proposed specialised centres would cover corneal and organ transplantation, toxicology, joint replacement, diagnostics, and therapeutic interventions.

In Bangladesh, dengue deaths this year have crossed 1,000, making this the deadliest outbreak since the first recorded one in 2000.

Meanwhile, in keeping with CEPI’s 100 Days Mission, South Korea is accelerating its vaccine production capabilities to better prepare for future infectious disease outbreaks. As part of its mid-to-long-term plan, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency is developing a robust vaccine infrastructure to become faster in designing and producing vaccines when needed. The plan is to build a library of prototype vaccines to ensure rapid response to outbreaks of priority pathogens.

Sanofi has inked an agreement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals to develop and commercialise the latter’s vaccine candidate, currently in phase 3, for extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli.

Biogen has announced that the US FDA has approved Tofidence, its biosimilar mAb referencing Roche’s Actemra. This is the first biosimilar of the arthritis drug to be approved in the US.

ZEISS Medical Technology and Boehringer Ingelheim have entered a long-term strategic collab to use predictive analytics to detect and treat eye diseases before permanent damage occurs.

And finally, the US CDC has selected Verily to support its National Wastewater Surveillance System in detecting Covid and mpox viruses in wastewater samples across the US.