Supreme Court Rules in Case That Could Change Vaccine Injury Lawsuits
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case that could have significantly changed vaccine injury lawsuits across America.
In the case of W.J. v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, parents wanted to sue after their child suffered a vaccine injury. However, under the Vaccine Injury Act, all lawsuits must be filled within 36 months.
The unnamed parents made the argument that the tolling provision, which would extend the statute of limitations, should apply in their case. That would give them six years to file a lawsuit.
If the Supreme Court had heard the case and ruled in favor of the parents’ ability to sue, it could have allowed other Americans to get more time to sue over vaccine injuries.
Cases Top 50,000 in Africa’s Mpox Outbreak
Last week African countries reported 2,532 new mpox cases, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, pushing the total since the first of the year to 50,840 cases, officials from Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said today.
The officials also reported 32 more deaths from the virus. At the briefing, Jean Kaseya, M.D., MPH, Africa CDC’s director-general, said cases continue to rise in Uganda and the outbreak has spread to one more district of Central African Republic, Paoua, which is on the border with Chad.
Rwanda, after going 4 weeks with no new cases, reported 20 more, which, according to Ngashi Ngongo, M.D., Ph.D., leader of Africa CDC’s mpox incident management team, reflects a testing backlog. The country has also been battling a Marburg virus outbreak.
Countries are making progress, especially with testing. And those that have started vaccine campaigns are reporting good uptake.
Officials said, however, that a remaining challenge is immunization hasn’t yet started for children, one of the hardest-hit groups, because of regulatory and supply issues. Currently, the Bavarian Nordic Jynneos vaccine is recommended for adolescents and adults only. Kaseya said Africa CDC is still working with Japan on a plan to receive about three million doses of the LC16 vaccine, which the country used in the 1970s to vaccinate young children.
Dynavax Drops Tdap Vaccine After Considering Phase 1 Data, Competition
Dynavax is giving up work on its combination vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis (Tdap) after mulling phase 1 data for the shot.
The biotech had been evaluating the persistence of pertussis immunogenicity for the asset, dubbed Tdap-1018, in an extension study of patients who had already received a booster dose of the shot as part of a phase 1 trial. The vaccine uses Dynavax’s CpG 1018 adjuvant. Data were due to be read out this quarter, but the company explained in its third-quarter earnings release Nov. 7 that it had decided to discontinue the program based on the results.
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Researchers Announce Updated Findings in Preventive Breast Cancer Vaccine Study
Cleveland Clinic researchers are presenting updated findings from their novel study of a vaccine aimed at preventing triple-negative breast cancer, the most aggressive and lethal form of the disease.
The study team found that the investigational vaccine was generally well tolerated and produced an immune response in most patients. The team described the side effects of the vaccine, showed the highest tolerated dose to date, and presented the immunologic effects of the vaccine.
Findings are being presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Annual Meeting (SITC 2024), held Nov. 6–10 in Houston. Launched in 2021, the ongoing clinical trial is evaluating safety and monitoring immune response of the vaccine.
