The National University Cancer Institute, Singapore (NCIS) and MiNA Therapeutics have dosed the first patients in an investigator-sponsored Phase I study of MiNA’s small activating RNA oligonucleotide, MTL-CEBPA, in combination with first-line standard of care, atezolizumab and bevacizumab, in patients with previously untreated, advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Atezolizumab and bevacizumab are… Read More
Phesi has analysed protocol design data and showed that Asian, Hispanic and Latino, Native Americans and Alaska natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islander patient subpopulations were all significantly and consistently underrepresented over the decade. Black and African American patients appear to have become better represented over the past decade. The study The data was… Read More
Sanofi will acquire Origimm Biotechnology in December 2021, an Austrian biotechnology company specialising in the discovery of virulent skin microbiome components and antigens from bacteria-causing skin disease (such as acne), adding ORI-001 to Sanofi’s early-stage pipeline. What is ORI-001? ORI-001 is a therapeutic vaccine candidate for acne vulgaris based… Read More
Over the last decade, groundbreaking chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapies have become a well-established cancer treatment modality. Clinical research continues to demonstrate the encouraging potential this approach holds for treating a wide array of conditions while increasing safety, tolerability, and efficiency in manufacturing. Atara Biotherapeutics, a California-based biotechnology company,… Read More
CAR T cell technology provides the foundation for established immunotherapies against certain types of blood cancer and holds great promise for the fight against many solid tumours too. One major drawback of conventional CAR T cell technology, which relies on a single target antigen, is the lack of tumour-associated antigens (TAAs) that… Read More
Emerging advancements in protein biotherapeutics are driving the need for more sensitive and accurate bioanalytical methods for their quantification. Serving as an orthogonal technology to the traditional ligand binding assays (LBAs), LC-MS has been routinely adopted for quantitative measurement of protein levels in bioanalytical laboratories. While various MS approaches have… Read More
Insilico Medicine, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, has announced that the first healthy volunteer has been dosed in a first-in-human microdose trial of ISM001-055. What is ISM001-055? ISM001-055 is a potentially first-in-class small molecule inhibitor of a novel biological target discovered by Pharma.AI, Insilico Medicine’s end-to-end AI-powered… Read More
Northwest Biotherapeutics, a biotechnology company developing DCVax personalised immune therapies for solid tumour cancers in the United States, has announced the closing of a $15 million financing. The company plans to use the funding to help accelerate its activities related to its brain cancer programme. The financing is in the form… Read More
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Avacta’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for AVA6000, which will allow the group to expand its Phase I clinical trial, ALS-6000-101, into clinical trial sites in the United States. What is AVA6000? AVA6000 is a novel form of… Read More
Quris, an artificial intelligence (AI) company in the pharmaceutical industry, has launched a clinical prediction AI platform to predict which drug candidates will safely work in humans. This will improve efficacy and cut drug development costs. What do they do? Quris uses AI-powered miniaturised “patients-on-a-chip” to avoid… Read More
BaseClear has appointed Alex Van Belkum as Chief Scientific Officer. He is a molecular microbiologist with extensive experience in molecular- and culture-based diagnostics, antimicrobial resistance testing and clinical microbiology. He will lead BaseClear’s science and innovation arm together with Innovation Manager Walter Pirovano and a team of PhD-level Product Managers. Official comment… Read More
Australian biopharmaceutical company Cholrem have produced CAVADEX (Beta-Cyclodextrin), a product which removes cholesterol from damaged and narrowed arteries after a few months of treatment, leading to increased blood flow. Context Atherosclerosis, also known as heart disease, is reportedly the western world’s number one killer of people. This disease results… Read More
NovAliX, a CRO specialising in drug research and development, has partnered with Sanofi for the development of new DNA-Encoded Libraries (DELs), allowing the partners to design both general and focused chemical libraries, and carry out screening activities to identify new and useful chemical structures. Why is this useful? … Read More
PerkinElmer has announced that the performance of its SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR assays are not impacted by the emergence of Omicron (B.1.1.529), a variant of concern that was recently identified by the World Health Organization (WHO). How the assays work There are more than 30 Omicron mutations… Read More
A new peer-reviewed article demonstrated that Hesperos’ Human-on-a-Chip (HoaC) cell-based neuromuscular junction (NMJ) platform system can mimic the disease phenotypes of myasthenia gravis (MG). The manuscript, titled “A Functional Human-on-a-Chip Autoimmune Disease Model of Myasthenia Gravis for Development of Therapeutics,” was published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. Read More
The latest sponsored DDW Sitting Down With podcast features Lisa Moneymaker and Paul O’Donohoe of Medidata and they talk to us about decentralised clinical trials. Medidata technology has helped to bring Covid-19 vaccines and treatments to market in record timelines and the company was the first to have launched a fully end-to-end Decentralised Clinical Trials (DCT) offering. Read More
