Microfluidics

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Unlocking the potential of Extracellular Vesicles: from single molecules to novel therapeutics By Dr Anna Caballe and Dr Katarzyna Ginda-Makela As part of normal homeostasis, cells release different types of small-sized membrane vesicles to traffic analytes across membranes, communicate with other cells and remove unwanted cell content. These vesicles can range in size from 30nm […]

Optimising Phenotypic Screening – Single-cell analysis versus 3D multicell analysis By Dr Richard M. Eglen In light of the high failure rate of compounds when they are subjected to clinical testing, we are seeing a renaissance in phenotypic screening in drug discovery. However, most phenotypic screening is based on the use of cellular assays and […]