Researchers at Karolinska Institutet announced they are on track to produce a vaccine against the new coronavirus, Sars-CoV-2. Several vaccine candidates are currently available in the freezers at the Department of Laboratory Medicine and the first animal studies are slated to begin at the end of March, according to Professor and Head of Department Matti Sällberg who is leading the effort together with virus researcher and Professor Ali Mirazimi and researcher Gustaf Ahlén.

The membrane surrounding cells acts as a selective barrier. Scientists have therefore struggled to engineer efficient methods of delivering nanomaterials, such as DNA, proteins and drugs, into cells. Now, Korean researchers have developed a rapid and efficient delivery method that uses the power of a tiny fluid vortex to deform the cell membranes.

The acquisition of Qiagen — at 43 dollars per share — will expand Thermo Fisher Scientific’s specialty diagnostics portfolio and also complement its offering with innovative sample preparation, assay and bioinformatics technologies.

A team of Hokkaido University researchers has developed a novel material synthesis method called proton-driven ion introduction (PDII) that could pave the way for creating numerous new materials.

Indian researchers have found a way to reduce the processing time for generating RBCs from haematopoietic stem cells in laboratories. They have published a report on their work in the journal, ‘Stem Cell Research and Therapy’.

Kaust researchers are engineering silkworms to grow the human form of E-selectin, revealing new aspects of its binding dynamics.

The movement of sea ice between Arctic countries is expected to significantly increase this century. This also raises the risk of more widely transporting pollutants like microplastics and oil between neighbouring coastal states, according to new research from McGill University in collaboration with University of Colorado Boulder, Columbia University, and Arizona State University.

One of the most pressing shortages facing hospitals during the Covid-19 emergency is a lack of ventilators. These machines can keep patients breathing when they no longer can on their own, and are quite expensive. Now, a rapidly assembled volunteer team of engineers, physicians, computer scientists, and others, centered at MIT, is working to implement a safe, inexpensive alternative for emergency use, which could be built quickly around the world.

The new partnership between Malvern Panalytical and Concept Life Sciences is expected to develop and deploy accredited physicochemical analysis techniques and methods in the pharmaceutical and food industries. Malvern Panalytical’s knowledge of analytical instrumentation and Concept Life Sciences' method validation and support expertise is anticipated to assist this development.

Graphite nanoplatelets integrated into plastic medical surfaces can prevent infections, killing 99.99 % of bacteria which try to attach – a cheap and viable potential solution to a problem which affects millions, costs huge amounts of time and money, and accelerates antibiotic resistance. This is according to research from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, in the journal Small.