LONDON - British pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca has partnered with the University of Oxford to develop and distribute a coronavirus vaccine being trialed in the UK, the pair announced Thursday.
Human trials of the vaccine developed by the university's Jenner Institute began last week, with hundreds of people volunteering to be part of the study that has received £20 million ($24.7 million, 22.6 million euros) in government funding.
"The collaboration aims to bring to patients the potential vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, being developed by the Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group, at the University of Oxford," said a joint statement.
"Under the agreement, AstraZeneca would be responsible for development and worldwide manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine."
Data from the first phase trial could be available next month, the statement said.
"Advancement to late-stage trials should take place by the middle of this year," it added.
The news comes after US scientists hailed the results of a major drug trial. People treated with Remdesivir recovered about 30 percent faster than those on a placebo.
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON - Gilead Science's remdesivir, one of the most highly anticipated drugs being tested against the new coronavirus, showed positive results in a large-scale US government trial, the company said Wednesday.
"We understand that the trial has met its primary endpoint and that NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) will provide detailed information at an upcoming briefing," the company said.
Though it is difficult to precisely quantify the finding in the absence of results, it represents the first time any drug has been shown to improve outcomes against the COVID-19 illness, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives globally and brought the world economy to a grinding halt.
There have been mixed results for the intravenous antiviral in recent weeks. A summary of results posted on the website of the World Health Organization showed it failed in a smaller Chinese trial, but days before that, Stat reported it had shown significant efficacy at a Chicago hospital.
However, this trial, begun in late February and overseen by the US government, is the largest and technically most robust.
According to a data sheet, its estimated enrollment was 800 patients, a portion of whom received the drug while the rest received a placebo.
Neither the patients nor their physicians were aware of which group they belonged to, in order to eliminate unconscious bias.
It is a Phase 3 trial, the final stage before any medication can receive regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Remdesivir, which previously failed in trials against Ebola, belongs to a class of drugs that act on the virus directly -- as opposed to controlling the abnormal and often lethal autoimmune response it causes.
It mimics 1 of the 4 building blocks of RNA and DNA and gets absorbed into the virus's genome, which in turn stops the pathogen from replicating.
The antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are also being widely used against COVID-19 on a so-called "compassionate basis" pending results from large trials, with early studies decidedly mixed.
Other therapies that are being studied include collecting antibodies from COVID-19 survivors and injecting them in patients, or harvesting antibodies from genetically-engineered mice that were deliberately infected.
Agence France-Presse
FENI, Bangladesh – Sixteen people were sentenced to death Thursday for burning alive a Bangladeshi teenager who refused to withdraw sexual assault charges against her head teacher.
The case highlights what activists say is a culture of impunity over sexual violence in the South Asian country of 168 million people, as well as abuse rife in around 20,000 seminaries that educate mostly poor and rural students.
Nusrat Jahan Rafi was doused in kerosene and set on fire on April 6 after she made a sexual harassment complaint against the principal of her rural Islamic seminary.
The head teacher, who a court in the southern coastal town of Feni found had ordered the brutal killing from jail after being arrested over the harassment claim, was among those sentenced to death.
Others included activists from the ruling Awami League party and some students -- including two females -- who either participated in the killing or guarded the gates of the seminary while it took place.
"The verdict proves that nobody will get away with murder in Bangladesh. We have the rule of law," prosecutor Hafez Ahmed told reporters after the verdict in a crowded courtroom.
Rafi was lured to the rooftop of the seminary in Sonagazi where her attackers pressed her to withdraw the complaint she had filed with police.
When she refused, she was tied up, doused in kerosene and set on fire.
She suffered burns to 80 percent of her body and died in hospital four days later.
Her death triggered widespread horror across the nation, with protesters in the capital Dhaka staging days of demonstrations seeking "exemplary punishment" for the killers.
The murder put pressure on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to do more to protect women, with her government ordering some 27,000 schools to set up committees to prevent sexual violence.
'NOT A BIG DEAL'
Rafi had gone to police in late March to report the sexual harassment, and a leaked video shows the local station chief registering her complaint but dismissing it as "not a big deal".
Police said the attackers' plan had been to pass off her death as suicide, but this failed after Rafi managed to stagger down the stairs while still engulfed in flames.
Activists say many of the women and children who report sexual violence in Bangladesh often suffer a backlash, and that successful prosecutions are rare.
Rafi's case was fast-tracked, with the hearing taking only 62 days at a special tribunal hearing cases of violence against women and children.
Maleka Banu, head of a woman's rights group, told AFP: "It is an exemplary punishment. We hope it will send a serious message to the perpetrators and collaborators of sexual violence."
She said she hoped the verdict would work as a deterrent and would bring down "alarming rise" in sexual violence in the country.
Since the arrest of the principal, at least five more madrasa teachers have been held on charges of rape and sexual assault of their students.
The head of the Mahila Parishad, another women's rights group, gave a "guarded welcome" at the quick conclusion of the case, but said more needed to be done to ensure increased convictions for sexual harassment and rape cases.
According to that group, there were 731 incidents of sexual violence reported in the first six months of the year, including 592 rapes, 113 gang rapes and 26 women who were killed after being sexually assaulted.
Researcher Rezaur Rahman Lenin said on average more than 200 people are sentenced to death each year in Bangladesh, and as of May around 1,500 people were on death row
The number of executions carried out is less than 10 a year.
Defense lawyers said they would appeal against Thursday's verdict in the high court.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
BOSTON - A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for a lawsuit accusing Harvard University of discriminating against Asian-American applicants to go to trial, a closely watched case that could influence the use of race in college admissions decisions.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston rejected dueling motions by Harvard and a nonprofit group suing the Ivy League university to rule in their favor ahead of a non-jury trial set to begin on Oct. 15.
The ruling came after the U.S. Justice Department, which has been investigating Harvard for potential civil rights violations over its affirmative action policy, in August threw its support behind the 2014 lawsuit by Students for Fair Admissions Inc (SFFA).
The group, headed by prominent anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, has alleged that Harvard's admissions process, which factors in race, significantly disadvantages Asian-Americans compared with other groups.
Burroughs wrote that rather than presenting her with undisputed facts and evidence that would allow her to rule without overseeing a trial, Harvard and SFFA had filed motions that were "essentially mirror images of one another."
"Whether SFFA may prove its intentional discrimination claim requires a close review of the conflicting expert testimony, the available documents, and the testimony of the admissions office employees in the context of a trial," Burroughs wrote.
Harvard in a statement said it does not discriminate against Asian-Americans and looked forward to defending itself at trial.
Blum declined to comment.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that universities may use affirmative action to help minority applicants get into college. Conservatives have said such programs can hurt whites as well as Asian-Americans.
In court papers, SFFA claimed an Asian-American male applicant with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 35 percent chance if he were white, 75 percent chance if he were Hispanic and 95 percent chance if he were black.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard has denied that it uses a quota system or has engaged in "racial balancing." It has criticized the lawsuit as an effort to attack the right of colleges to consider race as an admissions factor.
After President Donald Trump, a Republican, took office last year, the Justice Department began investigating whether Harvard's policies are discriminatory because they limit Asian-Americans' acceptance.
Yale University on Wednesday announced that the Justice Department was also investigating it over similar claims. The university denied discriminating against Asian-Americans.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
