Inside Precision Medicine • 21st December 2023

Breaking Down Sex and Gender Barriers in Search of Precision Medicine

Biological sex and gender have a large impact on the presentation of a disease, its progression, and how it is treated, but these factors have not received adequate research or clinical attention. Positive signs of change are emerging, but there is a lot that needs to be achieved before these benefits can reach a wide range of patients.

To achieve true precision medicine, many potential factors need to be considered. An important example of this is a person’s biological sex and gender.

“Intuit

Inside Precision Medicine • 20th December 2023

Breaking Down Barriers to Improve Women’s Health

Women’s health is chronically underfunded both in the public and private sectors and has been for many years. No one knows this better than Piraye Yurttas Beim, CEO and founder of Celmatix, a women’s health biotech company focused on improving ovarian health.

Since founding Celmatix in 2009, she has been working hard with others in the sector to raise the profile of women’s health and encourage investment in the field. Prior to starting the company, Beim was an academic researcher who completed

Inside Precision Medicine • 19th October 2023

The Digital Pathway to Widespread Precision Medicine

Digital health tools and technologies were thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic and were able to help many people get much needed medical advice and treatment when few other options were available. However, whether this boost to the industry will remain after a year of relative normalcy and a reduction in the COVID-19 threat is less clear.

“We’re just scratching the surface,” University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) chief technology officer Christian Carmody told Inside Precision

Inside Precision Medicine • 9th August 2023

Cancer: The Next Microbiome Frontier

Three therapeutic regulatory approvals in less than a year signal that the promise of the human microbiome may finally be paying off. All of the approved therapies focus on treating recurrent Clostridium difficile infection, but what is next for the field? With promising oncology-related trial results from a number of researchers and companies such as MaaT Pharma and Enterome, cancer could be the next microbiome frontier to be conquered.

Initially treated as a last resort by doctors for treatin

Chemistry World • 2nd August 2023

Click chemistry offers new, efficient process to produce unique cancer-fighting antibodies

Click chemistry has been used to create antibody-based molecules that can treat cancer. These sorts of molecules are already in trials and have shown good anti-tumour activity in human cancer cell lines.

These checkpoint inhibitory T cell engager (CiTE) molecules can engage the body’s immune system and direct cytotoxic T cells to destroy cancer cells. They include a type of bispecific antibody known as a bispecific T cell engager (BiTE) that recruits the killer T cells and a protein that helps

Chemistry World • 27th June 2023

Biocatalytic process shows promise for large-scale medicinal oligonucleotide production

A ‘one pot’ process for manufacturing oligonucleotides – short 20–30 base pair DNA or RNA molecules – has been developed. Oligonucleotides are of interest as they can be used to treat a range of medical conditions, but mass producing them is still difficult.

The biocatalytic process to produce oligonucleotides was developed by Sarah Lovelock at the University of Manchester, and colleagues. It can be carried out in an aqueous solution and uses a polymerase enzyme to extend a template strand with

Inside Precision Medicine • 30th May 2023

Creating a Path for Gene and Cell Therapies to be Accessible to Patients

Cell and gene therapy have surprisingly long histories. Cell therapy has existed in the form of bone marrow transplant, used to treat cancers and other conditions, since the late 1950’s, although it only came to prominence with the approval of the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell cancer therapies (Kymriah and Yescarta) in 2017.

The first gene therapy was given to a young girl with severe combined immunodeficiency in 1990. While this and other early treatments were successful, patien

Inside Precision Medicine • 12th April 2023

Tackling Rare Diseases in 2023

The beginning of this year marks the 40th anniversary of the passing of the Orphan Drug Act. While the field of rare diseases has seen much progress both in diagnostics and the development of new therapies since then, there are still significant challenges that need to be overcome to reach the majority of the 300 million people worldwide who are affected by these conditions.

Jim Geraghty has worked in the biotech and pharma industry for many years and has followed the burgeoning orphan drug sce

Inside Precision Medicine • 11th April 2023

EntrePRECISIONeur

A key goal in precision medicine is to get the right therapies to the people that need them in as effective and timely a way as possible. Better connecting patients and researchers is one way to achieve this and is something that Patrick Short, CEO of Sano Genetics in Cambridge, U.K., is passionate about.

Senior editor Helen Albert spoke to him about his journey from Wellcome Sanger Institute PhD student to CEO and about how he and his colleagues hope to improve research and accelerate precisio

BioWorld • 28th February 2023

Bat cell line reveals unusual molecular relationship with viruses

An international team of researchers has created two bat stem cell lines that reveal an unusual number of viral sequences in bat cells compared with those of other mammals. Writing in an article posted online Feb. 21, 2023, in Cell, the scientists suggested that the unusual amount of viral genetic material found in the bat stem cells could explain why these mammals are largely unaffected by most viral infections, despite being able to transmit them.

Inside Precision Medicine • 10th February 2023

Broadening the Scope of Clinical Trials: The Changing Role of Real-World Evidence

The role that real-world evidence, and the data that feeds into it, play in the clinical trials arena is changing. For many years, drug developers and regulators have collected real-world data (RWD) on adverse events linked to newly approved medicines. However, this data has not played a significant role in developing or executing pre-approval clinical trials.

The situation is now changing. “There’s always been a need to look at how drugs that are coming out of clinical trials behave in the rea

Labiotech.eu • 10th January 2023

Innovative biomaterials are revolutionizing tissue regeneration

Scientists are increasingly realizing the potential of biomaterials to help with many tasks. A key area biomaterials are being used in is tissue engineering and regeneration, something several biotechs and academic labs are currently exploring.

Biomaterials are materials or substances designed to function in a biological environment, which may or may not be made of biological material. Many are inspired by natural phenomena such as how mussels stick to rocks or the glue-like secretions of the C

Inside Precision Medicine • 20th December 2022

A Conversation with Molly He, CEO and co-founder of Element Biosciences

For a long time, the world of genetic sequencing has been largely dominated by one company, namely, Illumina. Molly He helped design and drive forward some of Illumina’s best selling technology, but is now forging her own path as CEO and co-founder of sequencing start-up Element Biosciences.

Originally from China, He did a PhD. in protein biophysics and biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. After working in protein engineering and drug design at Chiron and Sunesis Pharmaceu

Chemistry World • 21st November 2022

Bioelectric bacteria-powered sensor detects water contaminants in real time

Synthetic biology has been combined with electrical engineering to create a small bioelectric sensor that can sense water contaminants in just minutes.

The sensor is currently at the prototype stage and is not yet being produced commercially, but has already been used to detect thiosulfate, known to cause algal blooms, within 2 minutes and also the endocrine disruptor 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4-HT) within 3 minutes.

Detection methods for these environmental pollutants, and others such as nitrates a

Inside Precision Medicine • 14th October 2022

Five Microbiome Companies Making Waves in 2022

Recent research demonstrating how important the human microbiome is for maintaining good health has led to the founding of many biotech companies hoping to create microbiome-based therapeutics. These five biotech companies all have candidates in clinical trials and are primed to be among the first to receive market approval.

The human microbiome, consisting of all the “friendly” non-pathogenic micro-organisms living in and on the human body, plays an important role in keeping us healthy. Resear

Inside Precision Medicine • 16th August 2022

In Conversation with Renee Wegrzyn

There are few corners of the earth that were not affected by COVID-19 pandemic. Even wealthy countries like the U.S. were left woefully unprepared for the scale and the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, bringing the need for better pandemic preparedness to public attention.

Renee Wegrzyn, vice president of business development at Concentric by Ginkgo, was more prepared than most. Starting out as an applied biologist with a BSc and PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology, she has worked in the bi

Inside Precision Medicine • 16th August 2022

Genomic Pathogen Surveillance in the Spotlight

The COVID-19 pandemic has really highlighted the need for effective genomic pathogen surveillance and allowed researchers around the world to hone their skills and technology. While these advances are not in doubt, whether they are maintained and used to help prevent new pandemics and fight global threats such as antimicrobial resistance remains to be seen.

Over the last decade, huge advances in technology have made genomic sequencing cheaper and more accessible, facilitating the tracking of ba

Chemistry World • 2nd August 2022

Software from Cambridge crystallographic experts could save pharma industry millions

A new set of informatics tools called CSD-Particle will help academic and industry researchers understand particle behaviour in fine chemical manufacturing to try and reduce costs and make the process more efficient.

CSD-Particle is one of several software suites released by the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), the curators of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), based on this valuable repository of data. Founded in 1965, the CSD contains a wide array of different crystal stru

Labiotech.eu • 4th July 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven RNA therapeutics into the mainstream

As messenger RNA vaccines save lives around the world, and RNA interference drugs are greenlit for rare diseases, the field of RNA therapeutics is now moving faster than ever before.

The COVID-19 pandemic proved a turning point for the biotech companies BioNTech and Moderna, which specialize in developing technology based on messenger RNA (mRNA). The rapid approval and rollout of their Covid vaccines saved hundreds of thousands of lives, generating enormous publicity and profits for the compani

Inside Precision Medicine • 15th June 2022

The Human Genome: Finished in High Fidelity

Since the beginning of the human genome project in 1990, sequencing technology today has evolved beyond all recognition. No-one knows this better than Jonas Korlach, Chief Scientific Officer of PacBio and co-inventor of its revolutionary single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing technology.

At the end of March, a paper published in Science by the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium announced that a complete human genome had finally been finished using PacBio’s HiFi sequencing technology. Wh

Chemistry World • 26th April 2022

Edible, fluorescent silk tags could help stem tide of counterfeit medicines

A group of researchers based in the US and Korea have developed and tested an edible matrix code made of silk that can be attached to tablets or added to liquids as an anticounterfeiting measure. The tag is made of silk and is invisible to the eye, but can be picked up by specific optical filters on a smartphone camera that can pick up fluorescence.

Drug counterfeiting is an increasing problem. Every year it causes thousands of deaths and poisonings, and recent increases in online sales have on

Labiotech.eu • 28th March 2022

The Top 10 Insect-Powered Biotech Companies

Insects are often seen as pests, but many species can provide new sources of food, materials, and even ways to clean up plastic waste. Here are 10 companies in this space that we think are worth watching.

Many people think of insects simply as pests that eat crops and carry diseases such as malaria. While this is true in some cases, insects have also been an inspiration to scientists for many years. Biotechs and researchers are now applying this knowledge to create new and sustainable food sour

Inside Precision Medicine • 16th February 2022

Can AI Help Us Solve the Population Health Crisis?

We live in an age of wide-reaching population health problems, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity, that have a huge physical, mental, and financial cost for patients and providers. However, new forms of artificial intelligence (AI) could be the answer to solving these population health problems in an efficient and cost-effective way.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 60% of adults in the U.S. have a chronic disease and 40% have at least two. While there are

Labiotech.eu • 31st January 2022

Nature’s Painters: Making Sustainable Colors with Microbes

The production of textile dyes and food colorants can have a big environmental footprint. Biotech startups are rising to the challenge by engineering bacteria, fungi, and algae to sustainably produce natural colors.

Eight years ago, University of Cambridge researcher Jim Ajioka was in Nepal helping to produce a biosensor to detect arsenic in drinking water and was shocked at how poor the water quality was in the region.

“In Kathmandu, all of the textile industry just dumps its waste straight i

Inside Precision Medicine • 10th December 2021

A New Generation of CRISPR Technology

Janice Chen is very inspiring. At the age of 30, she has not only completed a PhD with Nobel prize winner Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley, but she has also helped co-found her own successful biotech company.

Jumping straight from finishing her PhD in 2018 to co-founding Mammoth Biosciences with Doudna, lab mate Lucas Harrington, now CSO, and Trevor Martin, now CEO, Chen is CTO of the company.

Mammoth recently announced it had raised $195 million in financing, bringing

New Scientist • 7th December 2021

Investigation fails to replicate most cancer biology lab findings

The reliability of early-stage cancer biology research is called into question by an investigation that concludes more than half of experimental results can’t be replicated by independent scientists

Lab-based cancer research isn’t always easy to replicate, according to a new investigation

An eight-year-long investigation into the reliability of preclinical cancer biology research has found that fewer than half of the results published in 23 highly cited papers could be successfully reproduced.

Inside Precision Medicine • 19th October 2021

Precision Through Diversity

Human genetics has advanced enormously over the last twenty years, but it is still being held back by diversity issues. Solving these problems is essential if we are ever to reach true precision medicine for all.

Since the completion of the human genome project 20 years ago, the field has changed beyond all recognition. It is now possible to sequence a genome for under $1,000—compared with the $2.7B cost of the original project—and in less than a week. Estimates suggest this will soon be even q

Inside Precision Medicine • 8th October 2021

DNA Vaccines: The Next Stage in the Vaccine Revolution?

Over the last two years, there has been an unprecedented frenzy to develop new vaccines due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but DNA vaccines have rather stood in the shadow of their mRNA cousins. With the first DNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 now approved in India, what’s next in this field and can these vaccines compete with others on the market?

The first human DNA vaccine, developed by Zydus Cadila, received market approval in India in August for protection against COVID-19. Although several veteri

Labiotech.eu • 6th September 2021

Why We Desperately Need to Develop New Antifungals

While serious fungal infections are rare, there is a limited number of approved drugs to treat them, and they may not always work due to the rise of antimicrobial resistance. Despite the challenges, researchers are starting to add new weapons to the arsenal to protect us against these microscopic invaders.

Developing effective antifungals is a big challenge for science. This is because fungi cells are more closely related to human cells than other microbes such as bacteria. Meaning that compoun

Inside Precision Medicine • 25th August 2021

From Hype to Utility

Artificial intelligence (AI) was perhaps overhyped when it was first applied for improving diagnostics, clinical decision support, and therapeutic target identification. Its reputation as a game-changer was likely sullied by the promise—and subsequent lack of meaningful results—of IBM’s Watson. Nevertheless, AI today is used in myriad ways to improve diagnostic and therapeutic pathways for patients and its uses are expanding. But can it really help to achieve widespread application of precision

Labiotech.eu • 21st July 2021

What the EU's Single-Use Plastics Ban Means for the Bioplastics Industry

A European directive banning a range of single-use plastics came into law this month. How are the new regulations impacting industrial biotech companies developing bioplastics?

In an attempt to reduce staggeringly high levels of plastic pollution seen around the world, particularly in marine environments, the 27 EU member states and Norway agreed in 2019 to restrict ‘single-use plastics’ from being produced and sold in the EU.

The countries were given two years to implement the new regulations

Labiotech.eu • 23rd June 2021

How Blockchain Companies Are Helping Us Protect Our Genomic Data

Using genomic data and the blockchain network, it is now possible to send anonymous genetic information around the world in the blink of an eye. Meet the companies that want to help us protect and control our own genetic data.

As the cost of sequencing an individual genome falls and more people have access to their genomic data, a question has arisen about data ownership. Namely, who owns or should own the data that is generated by genetic tests? While this is a debated question, many feel stro

Inside Precision Medicine • 14th June 2021

Sussing Out COVID-19 Severity

A striking feature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has caused so much havoc around the world over the last year is how variable a response it elicits from those it infects, with some not even expressing symptoms and others becoming seriously ill. Could variation in our genetics be the answer to these differences?

With more than 150 million cases and 3 million deaths reported across the globe, COVID-19 remains a massive public health problem, despite the rapid rollout of vaccination campaigns in co

Photo by Pok Rie on Pexels

Biodesigned • 28th May 2021

Prophet in the Sewer — Biodesigned

Environmental engineer Smruthi Karthikeyan started her postdoc with Rob Knight at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in March 2020 only days before the state implemented its first Covid lockdown.

“I haven’t met most of my colleagues,” she told me.

Starting a new job during a pandemic is not ideal, but Karthikeyan was soon offered an unexpected opportunity. “I was mostly working on computational stuff, and then one day, my principal investigator called me saying, ‘You're an environme

Inside Precision Medicine • 23rd April 2021

COVID-19 Testing Moves Towards Pooled and Rapid At-Home Tests

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters a new phase in the U.S., the way testing is being used is also changing and moving more towards a pooled and serial rapid test model with a view to reducing costs and minimizing community transmission.

During 2020, tests for SARS-CoV-2 had to develop as the pandemic continued. Initially focusing on accurate but time-consuming individual RT-PCR tests, there were problems with capacity, equipment availability, and the level of expertise required to carry out the te

Labiotech.eu • 14th April 2021

Biomaterials Are Making the Building Industry More Sustainable

There is a growing awareness of the waste and pollution caused by the building industry. New biomaterials are being created using waste products and microbes to solve these ecological problems.

“Using biological materials in buildings isn’t a new concept – we’ve built wooden structures for thousands of years,” said Gavin McIntyre, co-founder and Director of Business Development at Ecovative Design, a US-based biotech making materials with mycelium — part of the root system of mushrooms.

Increa

Inside Precision Medicine • 9th April 2021

Polygenic Risk Scores Taking Hold in the Clinic

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) have advanced enormously in recent years and are now well on their way to becoming an established part of modern medicine. But there are still some issues such as accuracy and applicability that need to be solved before they can truly become mainstream.

With increasingly sophisticated genetic technology at their fingertips, scientists have developed correspondingly sophisticated genetic tests. Searching for single monogenic mutations used to be the norm, but it’s now

Inside Precision Medicine • 7th April 2021

Can COVID-19 Lessons Help Manage Chronic Health Conditions ‘Tsunami’?

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many aspects of healthcare, but two leaders in the cardiovascular field believe lessons learned over the last year can help the U.S. deal with a future ‘tsunami’ of chronic health conditions, both those caused by the virus and from other causes.

Even before the pandemic, the U.S. has seen a downturn in life expectancy over the last few years. “This reversal is chiefly due to increases in drug overdose and suicide, but deaths from cardiovascular disease, parti

Inside Precision Medicine • 26th March 2021

Will COVID-19 mRNA Advances Help Progress Cancer Vaccines To the Clinic?

Over the last year mRNA vaccine development to combat COVID-19 has happened extremely quickly, but whether these scientific advances can have a positive impact on the development of cancer vaccines remains to be seen.

At the beginning of 2020, no mRNA drugs or vaccines were on the market. Since the beginning of the pandemic, two mRNA vaccines have been approved in the U.S. and in multiple other countries—those developed by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna—and another candidate, that developed by Ger

Inside Precision Medicine • 12th March 2021

Genomic Analysis Reveals Tumor-Like Nature of Human Placenta

An in-depth investigation into the genetics of the placenta reveals its tumor-like nature and shows how it may help normalize genetic mutations in the fetus that would otherwise have resulted in miscarriage.

The research team, led by the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, think that as the fetus divides away from the placenta, it uses it as a place to deposit genetic defects that would otherwise cause health problems.

It has been known for some time that the tissue that

Inside Precision Medicine • 26th February 2021

Three Million African Genomes: A New Project for A New Generation

Much has been achieved since the sequencing of the human genome project, but we are still only at the beginning of implementing truly personalized medicine. Could the proposed Three Million African Genomes project take us closer to the goal of inclusive, accurate genetic risk prediction that includes everyone regardless of their genetic ancestry?

This month is the 20th anniversary of the first publication of the draft human genome sequence. In the last two decades, genetics has advanced dramati

Forbes • 27th January 2021

Sensor Shows Promise For Continuous Heart And Lung Health Tracking

A small, liquid-filled sensor can continuously and accurately measure heart and lung sounds, detecting cardiac problems or shortness of breath at an early stage, something which could warn heart failure patients of health deterioration and also help pick up early signs of infections such as Covid-19.

Many of us own smart watches or fitness trackers, a large number of which now include heart rate monitors. However, while their accuracy has improved, they offer fairly limited information about he

Inside Precision Medicine • 22nd January 2021

What Can We Expect From The Second Wave of Coronavirus Vaccines?

Almost a year from the start of the global pandemic, there is hope on the horizon with several vaccines already approved and in the process of being rolled out. But the sheer scale of the need means more options are needed. What can we expect in the next wave of vaccines and are more approvals on the near horizon?

On the week that Biden officially takes over from Trump in the White House he has inherited a number of big challenges from his predecessor. One urgent and overriding problem is how t

Forbes • 21st January 2021

Gene Editing Technique Halts Premature Aging In Mice, Could It Help Children With Rare Disease?

A specialized gene editing technique that allows very small and precise changes to be made to the genetic code can halt a disease that causes premature aging in a mouse model and double the lifespan of the treated animals.

The hope is that this finding can be replicated in people with the same condition — a genetic disease called progeria — which currently has no cure. Children who develop the disease normally die around the age of 15 years.

Over the last decade, a new technique for editing ge

Labiotech.eu • 20th January 2021

Biotech Drives the Water Purification Industry Towards a Circular Economy

Water purification has never been more important, but antiquated methods and a lack of innovation have held the sector back. Biotechnology proposes solutions that bring us one step closer to a true circular economy.

Rising populations and pollution levels mean that water purification is now more crucial than ever before. However, much of the industry is still using water treatment methods that originated over 100 years ago.

“Coming from biotechnology, I’m really surprised about how little inno

Labiotech.eu • 11th November 2020

GMO Regulations in Europe Are "Not Fit for Purpose"

The controversial decision by the European courts in 2018 to regulate gene-edited organisms as GMOs has had a damaging effect on biotech companies working in this area.

The current GMO regulations were established in Europe in 2001 and were designed to strictly regulate the introduction of DNA from other species into animals and plants. These regulations do not cover mutagenesis techniques, such as exposure to radiation, where mutations are artificially induced without inserting foreign DNA.

I

Labiotech.eu • 9th November 2020

Gene Drives: A Controversial Tool to Fight Malaria

The advent of CRISPR gene editing has enabled the creation of gene drives, a technology that can increase the odds of a certain gene being inherited. While the technology could help us tackle malaria and control invasive species, the scientific community is divided on whether it is ethical.

The possibility of creating gene drives was introduced into the scientific community in 2003 by Austin Burt, a professor at Imperial College London. Burt was studying ‘selfish genes’ that can copy themselves

Forbes • 29th October 2020

Lab Grown Cartilage-Bone Grafts Help Rebuild Damaged Joints

Researchers have successfully grown cartilage-bone grafts in the lab that can be used to repair damaged joints such as the jaw.

Although reconstructive surgery is available to treat many joint injuries, it can be imprecise and those who experience such injuries often have to have multiple surgeries and suffer long-term pain and discomfort as a result.

The temporomandibular joint in the jaw is particularly complex to repair and more precise and personalized methods of doing this are needed. If

Labiotech.eu • 19th October 2020

Top 10 Companies Combining AI and Drug Discovery in Europe

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence over the last decade have the potential to revolutionize how drugs are developed. These are the top 10 companies in Europe that are working to make AI drug discovery a reality.

Drug development is a slow and increasingly expensive process. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to make the drug development process quicker, cheaper and more efficient. This technology can make scanning vast libraries of chemical compounds that might be able to tre

New Scientist • 12th October 2020

Earphone cameras watch your facial expressions and read your lips

A wearable device consisting of two mini-cameras mounted on earphones can recognise your facial expressions and read your lips, even if your mouth is covered.

The tool – called C-Face – was developed by Cheng Zhang at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleagues. It looks at the sides of the wearer’s head and uses machine learning to accurately visualise facial expressions by analysing small changes in cheek contour lines.

“With previous technology to reconstruct facial expressio

British Medical Journal • 11th August 2020

What will it take for Germany to embrace digital health?

Germans are not fast adopters of digital technology. With a fondness for using cash and low uptake of social media compared with most countries, they fiercely guard their right to control how personal information, including health records, is shared.1 When the independent foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung compiled an index measuring 17 countries’ progress in healthcare digitisation in 2019, Germany ranked second from the bottom (the UK came sixth).2

But 2020 is proving a time of change. Jörg Deba

Inside Precision Medicine • 4th August 2020

3D Facial Imaging Tool Can Help Diagnose Genetic Diseases

A computer-based facial analysis tool and 3D image database could help children with genetic conditions to get a quicker and more accurate diagnosis, suggests joint U.S. and Canadian research.



Many genetic conditions are rare and an accurate diagnosis can often take years. Despite significant genetic advances over the last 20 years, people in many countries have limited access to medical genetic testing and simpler and more efficient tools are needed to aid clinical diagnosis for these ch...

Labiotech.eu • 13th July 2020

The Three Obstacles Stopping Cell Therapy Becoming Mainstream

While there are now more cell therapies on offer than ever before, there are obstacles still preventing them from becoming widely used.

Cell therapy holds enormous promise for treating many different diseases. However, the field has also seen controversy regarding therapies using embryonic stem cells, as well as problematic fraud cases.

Some forms of cell therapy have been around since the 1950s, such as hematopoietic stem cell transplantation to treat certain types of cancer. While the potent

Labiotech.eu • 25th May 2020

Could Cell Therapy Target the Symptoms of Severe Covid-19?

The excessive inflammatory response seen in the most serious cases of Covid-19, along with shortages of ventilators, has caused a healthcare crisis in many countries around the world. Could cell therapy provide an answer to this dilemma?

Most people who become infected with Covid-19 experience symptoms such as a dry cough and mild fever, and recover without medical care. But around 14% develop more severe symptoms including pneumonia and shortness of breath.

Approximately 5% of patients with s

Science|Business • 14th April 2020

Balancing the scales in healthcare: winners and losers from COVID-19

The COVID-19, pandemic has brought the world to its knees in a way that has not been seen in most people’s lifetimes.

In addition to an enormous impact on human health in many countries, restrictions imposed in an attempt to control the virus and protect vulnerable populations are having far reaching impacts across the global economy.

Biotech and pharma companies in Europe and elsewhere have rushed to support work on developing new diagnostic tests, treatments and vaccines for the virus. But w

Labiotech.eu • 23rd March 2020

Riding the Wave of Cambridge Entrepreneurship

The University of Cambridge is world-famous, but unlike its US equivalent, the city isn’t as well known for its startup culture. Jason Mellad, CEO of StartCodon — a new accelerator based there — believes the area is a great place to set up a new biotech.

“When I arrived in 2004, there were several people, particularly from the Cambridge Angels and some of the early programs like iTeams, thinking about how entrepreneurship should be something that’s encouraged and I was fortunate enough to ride

Labiotech.eu • 11th March 2020

Why Women’s Health Can Be a Good Investment

Since the Hormone Replacement Therapy market was destroyed almost overnight in 2002 after side effects were reported by researchers, there has been a lot of caution about investing in companies with a focus on women’s health. Mary Kerr, CEO of KaNDy Therapeutics and NeRRe Therapeutics, knows this only too well, but has not let it deter her in her quest to bring a treatment for symptoms of the menopause to the market.

Kerr began her career in the UK big pharma company GSK. She held a range of di

Labiotech.eu • 11th February 2020

Why European Biotechs Should Look to China for Investment

Traditionally European biotechs have looked to the US for additional investment, but changes in the law and significant economic success in the country in recent years means that new opportunities are opening up in China that are ripe for exploitation.

China has a massive population and a correspondingly large patient group. Homegrown science is pretty advanced in some areas, such as CRISPR gene therapy and development of CAR-T cell therapies for cancer. However, drug development in China lags

Labiotech.eu • 28th January 2020

10 Scientists Behind Modern Biotech You Probably Don't Know

The modern biotech industry is a multi-million euro business, but who are the Europeans behind the science that made the industry what it is today? Here are 10 scientists, engineers and healthcare professionals we think you should know about.

Over the last 25 years, biotech has become a burgeoning worldwide industry. It only became the success it is today on the back of excellent science. While some companies and leaders grab the limelight, as well as a few researchers, often names get lost in

Labiotech.eu • 15th January 2020

How to Spot a Biotech Winner: Investment Lessons from Sofinnova

Making one biotech a success is hard enough, but correctly predicting multiple winners is the bread and butter of Antoine Papiernik, Managing Partner of Sofinnova Partners, one of the biggest and most prosperous life science venture capital investors in Europe.

Papiernik began his career in corporate finance. In 1995, he was working in investment in Prague for the French financial organization CDC (Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations). He was asked to come back to France to work on a life scienc

Labiotech.eu • 18th December 2019

How BioNTech Navigates the Biotech Fundraising Maze

BioNTech is on a mission to individualize cancer therapy by developing a range of different innovative therapies, a task that can be a rollercoaster ride, according to its Chief Business and Commercial Officer Sean Marett.

It’s been an interesting year for the German biotech. In July the company raised one of the biggest ever European biotech fundraising rounds with its €290M Series B. However, poor market conditions in the US led to its Nasdaq IPO, which was initially predicted to raise up to

Labiotech.eu • 12th June 2018

Spider Silk Shows Promise in Vaccine Field

Swiss and German scientists have engineered spider-silk microparticles that can be used to protect a vaccine particle, allow it to enter immune cells and trigger T-cell immunity without toxic effects.

The team, partnered by AMSilk — the German biotech behind Adidas’ biodegradable shoes, hopes their technique will allow more targeted and stable vaccines against difficult targets like cancer and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, which require a T-cell response.

When designing vaccines, i

Labiotech.eu • 30th May 2018

How to Close a €3.9B Acquisition Deal for Your Biotech Company

Ablynx, one of the big giants in the European biotech arena, closed the final stages of its €3.9B acquisition deal with Sanofi earlier this month, after details were announced in January. Edwin Moses, CEO of Ablynx, shared the company’s success story with attendees at our recent Refresh Meetup in Brussels.

The technology behind Ablynx’s success was discovered by Professor Raymond Hamers (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) in the 1990s. He noticed that the immune system of camelids, such as camels, lla

Labiotech.eu • 24th May 2018

Sugar-Munching Microbes Put the ‘Eco’ into the Dyeing Industry

The commercial dyeing industry is not known for being eco-friendly, which is something that PILI – a synbio startup based in France – is hoping to address with their color producing microbes. Philip chatted with its CEO, Jeremie Blache, to find out more about the company, its recent successful fundraising round and how its technology could revolutionize the textile industry.

The first synthetic color, mauveine (a shade of purple), was produced by accident in 1856 using petrochemical techniques.