Gene therapy

Immuno-Oncology’s Biomarker Dilemma: How to add value in an uncertain development landscape By Dr Rachel Laing and Olivier Lesueur Given their ability to promote long-term survival in a percentage of cancer patients, PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors have fast become foundational cancer therapies. But knowing which patients may respond to these drugs is challenging, in large part […]

Kinases and Drug Discovery: Protein Kinases as a Validated Drug Target By Professor Said A. Goueli The role of protein and lipid kinases in cellular physiology and normal and abnormal growth has been well appreciated and has been the focus of intensive research in both academic arenas and pharmaceutical industries. The payoff for the pharmaceutical […]

Filling The Drug Discovery Abyss – Novel Business Models to Push Through the Valley of Death By Dr Swati Prasad, Dr Charles McOsker, Professor Kathryn Chapman and Dr Michael Foley Over the past three years, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have approved around 200 novel drugs for […]

An Update on Hepatitis B Therapies By Dr John Sullivan-Bolyai The hepatitis B crisis is a worldwide unmet medical need. Hepatitis B (HBV) is the cause of a silent epidemic that has resulted in a worldwide healthcare crisis. Despite the significant burden it places on communities across the globe, hepatitis had been mainly ignored as […]

I Robot. I, The Future – Robotics Within and Beyond The Lab Richard Holland The Pistoia Alliance (whose membership includes most of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies, technology vendors and publishers active in the life science R&D sector), is keenly interested in discovering the ways in which innovation through pre-competitive collaboration can be used to […]

CRISPR Cas9: Transforming Gene Editing in Drug Discovery Labs By Dr John Comley It is evident from a recent market survey on gene editing in drug discovery that CRISPR/Cas9 is now recognised as the superlative method when attempting a gene knockout or when introducing defined mutations, insertions or modifications to the genome. Although use of […]

Cell Therapy & Gene Therapy – The emerging fourth pillar of healthcare systems By Keith Thompson As the CEO of an organisation that deals exclusively in cell therapy and gene therapy, it is no surprise that I would champion the emergence of these products as the fourth pillar of medicine alongside small molecules, biologics and […]

Breath Based Biomarker Detection & Breath Biopsy – Informing drug development and future treatment regimes By Billy Boyle and Dr Mike Murphy The recent approval of the first liquid biopsy test for the diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) demonstrates how biomarker-based detection tools are becoming important components of precision medicine-based drug treatment regimes. […]

Fusion Therapy – A New Approach to Combining Treatments By Dr Thomas Mehrling Increasingly, oncology agents are being used in combination. However, with complications such as drug resistance and unfavourable side-effect profiles, researchers have been looking for new ways to enhance treatment effect and tolerability. New fusion technology molecules appear to offer a beneficial synergy, […]

The Human Microbiome – A new frontier in drug discovery By Lee Jones There is a new phenomenon sweeping the globe (or at least sweeping the imagination of people around the globe). It is the human gut microbiome and the role it may play in the future of human health. Recent reports have indicated that […]