Recent News

By Region: Asia/Pacific

Film reveals new footage of Soviet bioweapons program

(CornellChronicle) The purpose of a secret Soviet facility was to produce tons of anthrax bacteria to kill Americans, according to a U.S. government official. The facility was capable of producing 300 metric tons of anthrax in 10 months – more capacity than the entire Iraqi biological weapons program. “The scale is just chilling,” Andrew Weber Read More »

May 15, 2013
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, Europe, and Policy & Initiatives
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North Korean Duck Farm Hit By H5N1 Avian Influenza

(ThePoultrySite) A new outbreak of the H5N1 strain of the avian influenza virus has been confirmed at a duck production unit in P’yongyang-Si, resulting in the deaths of more than 164,000 ducks. This is according to the World Organisation for Animal Health who received notification from the Anti-Epizootic Department at the Ministry of Agriculture in Read More »

May 15, 2013
| Filed under Asia/Pacific and Public Health
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Medicago Produces VLP Vaccine Candidate for Emerging H7N9 Virus

(GlobalBiodefense) Medicago Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing vaccines based on proprietary manufacturing technologies and Virus-Like Particles (VLPs), this week announced that it has successfully produced a new VLP vaccine candidate for the H7N9 virus that is responsible for the current influenza outbreak in China. “To our knowledge, Medicago is the first to produce Read More »

May 10, 2013
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, North America, and Countermeasures
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New antiviral treatment could significantly reduce global burden of hepatitis C

(EurekAlert) Around 150 million people globally are chronically infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) – a major cause of liver disease and the fastest growing cause of liver transplantation and liver cancer. 1 New prevention strategies are urgently required as people are continuing to be infected with HCV. Findings, published in Hepatology, reveal the Read More »

May 7, 2013
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, Europe, Countermeasures, Public Health, and Research
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Chinese Team Boosts Avian Flu’s Transmissibility

(GlobalSecurityNewswire) Chinese scientists have modified avian influenza to spread rapidly through the air between guinea pigs by incorporating genetic material from a human version of the virus, the journal Science reported last week. The team created 127 H5N1 bird flu strains with varying amounts of genetic code from the virus behind the H1N1 swine flu Read More »