💊 Uzbekistan begins trial over cough syrup deaths; AbSci, Caltech get BMGF funding for HIV vaccine; J&J’s Talvey gets accelerated approval

#405 | Glioblastoma immunotherapies; Pigmentation in your genes; Plastic in the seas

Hello, and welcome back to yet another week with us at The Kable. A five-day cholera vaccination campaign is underway in five districts of the Jubaland State of Somalia to vaccinate close to 600,000 people.

The government of Kenya and USAID have entered a strategic partnership to drive the African country’s Universal Health Coverage (UHC) agenda.

Like several other African countries, Morocco, too, is losing more healthcare professionals than it can afford to.

Meanwhile, Namibia has banned poultry imports from Denmark and the Netherlands — no prizes for guessing why.

In Tanzania, the results of a phase 1b trial of a new type of malaria vaccine – an anti-RH5 vaccine – show promise. A phase 1b trial in the Gambia - which will examine the effects of the combined use of this shot and an anti-sporozoite vaccine like RTS,S - is planned.

Over in Bangladesh, the dengue outbreak is not relenting. The overall death toll is now close to 400.

Taiwan’s Lotus Pharmaceutical has inked an exclusive collaboration and license agreement with the US-based Corium to market the latter’s Alzheimer’s treatment in 10 markets across Asia.

Hikma Pharmaceuticals has entered an exclusive licensing and commercialisation agreement with Rakuten Medical, allowing the former to exclusively commercialise Rakuten’s oncology products which use its Alluminox platform in the MENA region.

India is trying to curb the entry of substandard gloves, mainly nitrile gloves, into the country to regulate the quality of surgical gloves and minimise their import burden.

On the other side of the world, Astellas Pharma is expanding its footprint in Massachusetts with plans for a new life sciences facility in Cambridge. It will also be home to Discovery Accelerator, Astellas’ biotech incubator.

AbSci and Caltech researchers have received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate the development of a cost-effective HIV therapeutic vaccine which will potentially protect against all strains of the virus.

The US FDA has granted accelerated approval to J&J’s bispecific antibody blood cancer therapy, Talvey.

The US FDA has also published draft guidance on post-marketing approaches to gather data from populations underrepresented in clinical trials.

Pfizer seems to be enjoying spending time in court. The company and the Scripps Research Institute are suing Dexcel Pharma Technologies for patent infringements related to a cardiomyopathy treatment.

And finally, BMS is still riding the layoff wave.