USDA Secretary to headline first-ever BIO IMPACT Digital

We’re pleased to announce that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue will headline BIO IMPACT Digital, our first-ever digital conference for the agriculture and environment biotech industry taking place on September 21-22, 2020.

Secretary Perdue will join Brian Brazeau, Vice-chair of BIO’s Food and Agriculture Section Governing Board and President of Novozymes North America, for a fireside chat on USDA’s Leadership in Driving Innovation in Agriculture on September 22, 10 AM ET.

The session will highlight how biotech applications are supporting USDA’s Biotech Innovation Agenda—reducing the environmental footprint of farms and food production while driving sustainability and economic growth.

And it's one of several sessions that will showcase biotech’s role in building a more resilient economy, featuring speakers from Amyris, AquaBounty, Genomatica, Gingko Bioworks, Zymergen, and more. (The full program can be found here.)

Formerly the BIO World Congress, BIO IMPACT Digital will bring together the agriculture and environment biotech industry for two days of virtual educational sessions and partnering. 

For more information and registration, visit www.bio.org/bioimpact.

More Agriculture and Environment News:

DOE: Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Review of Technical Pathways
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy released a new report that describes potential pathways to produce sustainable alternative fuels suitable for use by the commercial aviation sector. 

STAT News: Doctors offer guide for teaching the health effects of climate change in medical residency
“Their framework, published in a paper Wednesday in Academic Medicine, includes a breakdown of high-risk populations, including the elderly and low-income families, and a review of the current understanding on how climate impacts health—such as the relationship between air quality and respiratory illness.”

Among yesterday’s big headlines, AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford paused the phase 3 clinical trial of their COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s what you need to know—and why this a sign that the safety protections are working.

What happened? One participant in the clinical trial of the AstraZeneca/University of Oxford vaccine candidate developed unexplained spinal inflammation, causing the trial to be put on hold, reports The Washington Post. 

We don’t know yet whether the illness was caused by the vaccine—but it’s “a concrete example of how even a single case of an unexpected illness is sufficient to require a clinical hold for the trial in multiple countries,” said NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins during yesterday’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on vaccine safety.

Is this a setback in the vaccine race? No. “The reason we’re investing not in one, but in six different vaccines is because of the expectation that they won’t all work,” Dr. Collins continued, adding that such a pause is “not at all unprecedented.”  

And more importantly, “it is a sign the system in place to protect participants is working,” as several experts explained.

This is exactly what the biopharmaceutical industry and BIO leadership have committed to in recent statements about vaccine safety. AstraZeneca was among the nine companies that recently signed a joint statement committing to vaccine safety and science, which came shortly after BIO leadership released an open letter articulating principles to ensure the “integrity, transparency, and objective assessment” of COVID-19 clinical data.

Read BIO's latest blog on this initiative. 

What they’re saying: “This temporary pause is living proof that we follow those principles while a single event at one of our trial sites is assessed by a committee of independent experts. We will be guided by this committee as to when the trials could restart, so that we can continue our work at the earliest opportunity to provide this vaccine broadly, equitably, and at no profit during this pandemic,” AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in a statement.

Read BIO’s open letter on COVID-19 data. 

Learn more about what BIO members are doing to end the pandemic at www.bio.org/coronavirus.