Academic

29 June 2020 Image: Clay Banks Evotec, Samsara BioCapital, KCK have launched Autobahn Labs, a novel virtual incubator partnering with top academic and research institutions to catalyse early-stage drug discovery and development. Autobahn Labs also announced a first-in-kind strategic collaboration with UCLA Technology Development Group to identify and advance the most promising areas of scientific […]

26 June 2020 Image: National Cancer Institute A research team led by the University of Kent and Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, has solved an almost 40-year old mystery in leukaemia therapy and the drug nelarabine. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is the most common cancer in children. There are two types of ALL: B-ALL, which resembles […]

26 June 2020 Image: Conor Samuel A Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine-led consortium has received an £18.6 million grant from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strength in Places Fund (SIPF) to deliver a major project to tackle infectious diseases, including COVID-19. The funding award recognises Liverpool City Region’s world-class expertise in infectious diseases. Alongside […]

25 June 2020 Metabolon and DNA Genotek have teamed up to create OMNImet-GUT, said to be the first device for in-home collection and ambient-temperature storage and shipping of faecal samples for metabolomics, to the research market. “For years, our customers from across biopharma, academia and population health have been asking for a validated, ambient-temperature solution […]

25 June 2020 Dotmatics has agreed to acquire BioBright, an expert in automating the flow of data from laboratory instruments to a secure cloud. BioBright’s solutions enable scientists to automate the collection of data from in-house and externally networked sources, and then standardise and analyse crucial experimental data with validation and integrity checks built in. […]

Scientists from AI precision medicine company, PrecisionLife, have found 68 genes associated with risk of developing severe COVID-19 by using its proprietary AI-enabled precision medicine platform to analyse the genomes of 929 patients from the UK Biobank who had a severe response to SARS-CoV-2. Prior to an effective and widely available vaccine, PrecisionLife’s insights may […]

22 June 2020 Epidarex Capital, an international finance firm, has launched a £102 million fund in Edinburgh to invest in emerging life sciences businesses. The fund will build new life science companies using world-class research and innovation from emerging hubs across the UK, including university spinouts. Typical initial investments will range from £2 million to £5 […]

22 June 2020 SLAS Transformed is an interactive event focused on omics, synthetic biology and genome editing along with applicable implications for the current pandemic. The two-day event runs from 23-24 June 2020, offering 30-minute scientific research presentations, live exhibitor presentations and one-on-one networking sessions. It will span multiple time zones (6.30am-8pm) US Central and will […]

19 June 2020 CatalYm will be presenting two abstracts identifying a novel immunoregulatory role for Growth-and-Differentiation Factor 15 (GDF-15) and its effective neutralisation by CTL-002 antibody in cancer at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting II on 22-24 June. Tumor-derived GDF-15 suppresses T-lymphocyte recruitment to the tumor microenvironment describes in vitro and […]

AI VIVO, a company combining systems pharmacology and artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate drug discovery, has announced that its platform identified dexamethasoneas having high potential for the treatment of COVID-19 in April 2020. AI VIVO, a company combining systems pharmacology and artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate drug discovery, has announced that its platform identified dexamethasoneas having […]

17 June 2020 This is the second tranche of growth capital loan signed with the European Investment Bank in May 2019. The new funds will be used for the development, manufacture and commercialisation of in vitro diagnostics for infectious diseases Mobidiag, a revenue generating, molecular diagnostics company with complementary platforms that address antimicrobial resistance and […]

09 June, 2020 The specialist developer and manufacturer of proteins for stem cell, organoid and regenerative medicine applications announced the successful closure of a £1.5 million (US$1.9 million) series A investment round to accelerate the global scale-up of its commercial operations. According to Cambridge based Qkine, the funding round attracted support from a range of […]

Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD), owner of the CDD Vault, a comprehensive drug discovery informatics platform for research laboratories, has asked researchers what they think biotechnology world will look like after Covid-19. A few responses are listed below. “Covid-19 may be the tipping point that shifts us from the current model of “sick-care” to a more […]

15 May, 2020 The Swiss next-generation bioanalytical instruments specialist announced a collaboration with Adriano Aguzzi, Professor for Neuropathology, University of Zurich, to characterise immunological responses to SARS-CoV-2 such as IgA, IgM and IgG antibodies, which signal whether an individual has been exposed to the coronavirus. The collaboration aims to understand who has already been infected […]

By Dr William Olds and Dr Deepa Shankar While the antibody market has evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry enabling the discovery of cures, disease diagnosis and basic science acceleration, this has allowed low quality antibodies to hit the market. With a large crisis in reproducibility, the need for high quality antibodies has never been greater. […]

By Andrii Lozoniuk Volume 21 Issue 2 – Spring 2020 Gathering compound solubility data is a key step during drug discovery that helps ensure cost-effective screening, yet it is a long process and is often underestimated in terms of difficulty. Global sharing of such data can help pharmaceutical companies minimise unnecessary expenditures in terms of […]