From May 23 to August 13, 2021, the Institut Pasteur, in partnership with the French National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM), Santé publique France and the Ipsos institute, conducted the fourth part of the ComCor epidemiological study on circumstances and places of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in France. The aim of the study was to identify the socio-demographic factors, places visited and behaviors associated with a higher risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2.

On 26 November 2021, WHO designated the variant B.1.1.529 a variant of concern, named Omicron, on the advice of WHO's Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE). This decision was based on the evidence presented to the TAG-VE that Omicron has several mutations that may have an impact on how it behaves, for example, on how easily it spreads or the severity of illness it causes.

A combination of two targeted cancer drugs showed unprecedented, "clinically meaningful" activity in patients with highly malignant brain tumors that carried a rare genetic mutation, according to a clinical trial report by investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The drug combination, which blocked an overactive cell-growth signaling pathway, shrank tumors by 50% or more in one-third of 45 patients with hard-to-treat high-grade gliomas, including glioblastomas, the most aggressive brain tumor.

The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) is further enabling cancer research worldwide by making a massive collection of cancer data available for analysis via Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform. Providing secure, controlled access to ICGC genomic and clinical data on Azure will mitigate the need for researchers to obtain massive amounts of storage and computing power within their home institutions, meaning that more researchers will be able to use the data.

Aspirin use is associated with a 26% raised risk of heart failure in people with at least one predisposing factor for the condition. That’s the finding of a study published today in ESC Heart Failure, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Predisposing factors included smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The population's immunity to SARS-CoV-2, achieved either through infection or vaccination, is crucial to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. A team of researchers led by the University of Zurich (UZH) has now discovered another component that contributes to SARS-CoV-2 immunity - previous antibody responses to other, harmless coronaviruses.

For the past year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to engulf the globe, fueled in part by novel variants and the uneven distribution of vaccines. Every day, hundreds of thousands of new COVID-19 cases and thousands of new deaths are still being reported worldwide, creating a need for drugs that can combat the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.