Gene Editing

By Dr Jamie Freeman Base editing is a potentially transformative technology for engineering DNA in cells that has the potential to generate knockouts or correct certain errors or mutations in the DNA for applications such as cell or gene therapies. Compared with currently-available gene editing methodologies such as CRISPR/Cas9, which creates ‘cuts’ in the gene […]

Horizon Discovery Group plc, a global leader in the application of gene editing and gene modulation technologies, today announced the addition of predesigned synthetic single guide RNA (sgRNA) to its product range. The sgRNAs, available individually or as library collections, expand the Company’s Edit-R gene engineering platform which provides a convenient and accessible approach to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

14 July 2020 Image: Denys Nevozhai Merck has opened its M Lab Collaboration Centre in Shanghai, the largest of the company’s nine centres worldwide. “With the booming pharmaceutical industry in Asia and greater emphasis on novel drug therapies, we see an increase in R&D on leading-edge treatments including cell and gene therapies in China,” said […]

9 July 2020 Horizon Discovery Group has introduced stably expressing Cas9 and dCas9-VPR cell lines to help accelerate gene knockout and gene activation experiments, respectively. The cell lines are optimised to work alongside Horizon’s Edit-R predesigned synthetic single guide RNA (sgRNA) and CRISPRa guide RNA, offering researchers a complete solution to simplify and streamline CRISPR […]

Researchers have developed a human cell ‘membrane on a chip’ that allows continuous monitoring of how drugs and infectious agents interact with our cells. It may soon be used to test potential drug candidates for COVID-19. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, Cornell University and Stanford University, say their device could mimic any cell […]