Enabling technologies

Image: Joshua Coleman According to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), pharmaceutical companies should stockpile six weeks’ worth of goods “to help ensure the continuity of supply of medical goods into and out of the UK”. In a letter to the industry Steve Oldfield, Chief Commercial Officer, acknowledges the impact of COVID-19 on the sector […]

Image: Ani Kolleshi The US Department of Defence (DOD) has awarded Evotec’s Seattle-based subsidiary, Just-Evotec Biologics a contract worth $18.2 million to develop monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) for treatment and/or prevention of COVID-19 Under the contract, Just–Evotec Biologics will design a manufacturing process for the production of Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) clinical supplies of two […]

Some of the most promising advances in cancer treatment have centred on immunotherapies that rev up a patient’s immune system to attack cancer. However, immunotherapies don’t work in all patients, and researchers have been searching for ways to increase their effectiveness. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have combined two immunotherapy strategies […]

British Patient Capital is committing $65m to SV Health Investors’ latest fund, SV7 Impact Medicine Fund (IMF), to turn scientific breakthroughs into biotech companies producing high impact precision medicine drugs for poorly treated diseases. The commitment increases British Patient Capital’s exposure to life sciences and health technology, building on a commitment to the Dementia Discovery […]

27 July 2020 Image: CDC GlaxoSmithKline and CureVac are collaborating for the research, development, manufacturing and commercialisation of up to five mRNA-based vaccines and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) targeting infectious disease pathogens. The collaboration complements GSK’s existing mRNA capabilities with CureVac’s integrated mRNA platform. mRNA (messenger RNA) technology is a rapidly progressing, cutting-edge platform for the […]

The UK’s capability to manufacture vaccines has received a substantial boost, as the UK government has announced an additional £100 million to ensure that any successful COVID-19 vaccine can be produced at scale in the UK. The investment will fund a Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre to accelerate the mass production of […]

Understanding Animal Research (UAR), which promotes openness about animal research, has released a list of the ten organisations in Great Britain that carry out the highest number of animal procedures in medical, veterinary and scientific research. These statistics are freely available on the organisations’ websites as part of their ongoing commitment to transparency and openness […]

21 July 2020 Image: Anshu A Thanks to seed financing from Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF) and Evotec, Quantro Therapeutics will generate a drug discovery pipeline, aiming to transform the precision and scope of cell-based compound screens. With the introduction of ‘Transcriptional Fingerprinting’ to drug discovery, Quantro intends to revamp the scope of pharmacologic interventions […]

Image: Dimitri Houtteman A COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca has generated an immune response in a study of roughly 1,000 patients, according to interim results. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has responded to the results of the Oxford – AstraZeneca vaccine trial. A Covid-19 vaccine being developed by […]

20 July 2020 Image: Toa Heftiba Sphere Fluidics and Heriot-Watt University have been awarded a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) grant from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. The grant will facilitate the development of novel droplet generator instrumentation, which will be used to expand Sphere Fluidics’ portfolio of microfluidic instruments for advanced biologics discovery and […]