Research study

Proteomics company SomaLogic is sponsoring the Genomax Research Grant Award for researchers in Singapore, the company’s first grant in the APAC region. The winners of the award will receive proteomic data from SomaLogic’s 7,000-plex assay, which will be run at Singapore-based Molecular Genomics. The grant programme, which was launched at the Asia Oceana Human Proteome […]

A new study has found that the antiviral tecovirimat (TPOXX) appears to be safe and effective for the treatment of monkeypox symptoms and skin lesions. This University of California Davis Health (UC Davis Health) study is one of the earliest studies to assess and report the outcomes of treating patients with monkeypox with this antiviral. […]

News round-up by DDW’s Megan Thomas for 14-18 March, 2022  New breakthroughs, results, clinical trials and research exemplify the constant and forward-moving trajectory of the drug discovery and development industry in this week’s news round up.  1. Atrogi gets go-ahead to begin Phase I study of type 2 diabetes therapy  Early-stage biopharma company Atrogi has […]

New research published in Nature Communications by an international research team finds that people suffering from Covid-19 could have several different SARS-CoV-2 variants hidden away from the immune system in different parts of the body.   What does this mean?  The study’s authors say that this may make complete clearance of the virus from the body […]

News round-up by DDW’s Megan Thomas for 14-18 February, 2022  This week, DDW rounds up updates, approvals, research and trials which will enable scientists to make life-saving developments in the drug discovery industry.  1. Trial launched of HIV vaccine antigens delivered through mRNA technology  IAVI and Moderna have dosed the first patients in a clinical […]

Open Orphan has released the results from its Covid-19 characterisation study, which was a partnership between hVIVO, Imperial College London, the Vaccine Taskforce and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. The results from this study show that a SARS-CoV-2 human challenge is safe in healthy young […]

An in vivo CRS Evaluation Study in humanised mouse models can deliver fast, reproducible, and translatable data about drug safety in just two weeks. A humanised mouse platform offers the unique ability to preclinically analyse a fully systemic response that involves human immune cells and surrounding tissues. Furthermore, the platform also allows for efficacy testing […]

News round-up by DDW’s Megan Thomas for 10-14 January, 2022  Studies, approvals and research are at the heart of drug discovery, which has been exemplified in this week’s drug discovery news. Megan Thomas has rounded up her top five stories of the week.   Vaccine-like mRNA injection can be used to make CAR-T cells  A study from […]

New UCLA-led research in mice suggests that adding a certain type of tomato concentrate to the diet can reduce the intestinal inflammation that is associated with HIV. Left untreated, intestinal inflammation can accelerate arterial disease, which in turn can lead to heart attack and stroke. The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Pathogens.  The […]

Results of a new study by researchers at Case Western Reserve University represent a step toward improving understanding of Crohn’s disease and the factors that cause its intestinal inflammation.  About Crohn’s disease  Crohn’s disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that can lead to chronic inflammation of the entire digestive tract. Symptoms include diarrhea, […]

Research by the Riken Institute in Tokyo, published in the British journal Communications Biology, offers an explanation for Japan’s success in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic when compared with other countries. The research is a piece of the puzzle of why there remains relatively low rates of death and serious illness from Covid-19 in Japan.  Following […]

New research from Qatar, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, has found that the natural immunity from prior infection of Covid-19 has a 92% efficacy against reinfection of the Beta variant, and a 98% efficacy against reinfection of the Alpha variant.   The study  The study looked at a national cohort of Qataris, comparing […]

Chimeric Antigen Receptor or CAR-T cells, a new form of immunotherapy with genetically engineered immune system cells, has been approved for the treatment of multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer.  Context  In a case study published in Nature Medicine, Sinai scientists reported a previously unknown neurological side effect resembling symptoms Parkinson’s Disease in a patient […]

A new peer-reviewed article demonstrated that Hesperos’ Human-on-a-Chip (HoaC) cell-based neuromuscular junction (NMJ) platform system can mimic the disease phenotypes of myasthenia gravis (MG). The manuscript, titled “A Functional Human-on-a-Chip Autoimmune Disease Model of Myasthenia Gravis for Development of Therapeutics,” was published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.  Context  There is an unmet need […]

A group of researchers at Qatar Foundation and Hamad Medical Corporation has released a study that highlights a total of 60 disease-causing genetic variants linked with cancer, heart diseases, high cholesterol level and other diseases, with cancer-associated variants being the most frequent – which is consistent with the high prevalence of cancer in the Qatari […]

The Comprehensive Resistance Prediction for Tuberculosis International Consortium (CRyPTIC) research project has reportedly collected the largest ever global dataset of clinical M. tuberculosis samples from across the world consisting of 15,211 samples from 27 countries on five continents.  Using a new quantitative test for drug resistance and a new approach which identifies all the genetic […]