Sequencing

Macrogen Europe has opened a new sequencing facility in Maastricht. It is located close to the Netherlands’ southern border, which, combined with a fast in-house sample pickup service, means that Macrogen Europe can now offer Sanger sequencing results within 24 hours of sample pickup throughout Belgium and the Netherlands.  The new lab, part of the Brightlands Maastricht Health Campus, is […]

Listen to this article on the DDW Podcast: Dr Bongcho Kim is the new CEO of Macrogen Europe, a Netherlands-based provider of genomic sequencing services. Dr Kim’s appointment comes at a time of sustained growth for the company, which is benefitting from the rapidly expanding sequencing market. He talks to Lu Rahman and explains the important […]

Listen to this article on the DDW Podcast: Dr Patrick Courtney (SiLA consortium), Burkhard Schaefer (SiLA consortium/ASTM AnIML) and Oliver Peter, Senior Director, Senior Group Leader Biology Technologies and Lead Discovery, Biology, Idorsia Pharmaceuticals, look at the importance of automation in the face of global disease. As we write this, vaccines are being injected into arms […]

Genomic sequencing service provider Macrogen Europe has achieved an upgrade to its next generation sequencing (NGS) capacity. The installation of an additional Illumina NovaSeq 6000 high-throughput sequencing system in its headquarters in the Netherlands helps manage increased demand with high-quality results and fast, reliable turnaround times. The addition of the NovaSeq 6000 to Macrogen Europe’s […]

Listen to this article on the DDW Podcast: Dr Tim Brears, CEO, Evonetix and Dr Raquel Sanches-Kuiper, Director of Biology, Evonetix explore applications of synthetic DNA in drug discovery and development, the benefits and limitations of current methods, and the opportunities offered by emerging DNA synthesis technologies. On 16 April 16, 1956, Arthur Kornberg and his […]

The biggest constraint in discovering new antibodies for immunotherapy is constructing the underlying DNA sequence, says Dr. Aaron Sato, CSO of Twist Bioscience. Inside the human body, the immune system generates antibodies that can target just about any foreign molecule. It does so through DNA recombination and somatic hypermutation – essentially, a genetic mix-and-match system […]

Honing in on perfect targeting By Dr Samantha Zaroff Volume 21 Issue 3 – Summer 2020 The pros and cons of different delivery modalities for personalised cancer vaccines. Introducing neoantigens directly into a patient in order to elicit an anti-tumour killing immune response is known as personalised cancer vaccine therapy. Currently, there is a huge […]

By Richard Gray The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted the need for fast and efficient development and production of vaccines for a whole gamut of pathogens, old and new. Microfluidics technologies can be used to accelerate the vaccine development process in a number of ways, not least in the directed evolution of the strains […]

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 […]

6 July 2020 Image: Science in HD Olink Proteomics’ Olink Explore 1536 combines the company’s proximity extension assay (PEA) high-multiplex immunoassay technology with next-generation sequencing (NGS) readout on the Illumina NovaSeq platform. Olink Explore 1536 has several features designed to overcome significant limitations in other proteomic technologies, including increased performance in multiplexing and throughput. According […]

3 July 2020 Image: Japeth Mast My Personal Therapeutics and Pentavere Research Group, have achieved EUREKA Collaborative R&D: AI and Quantum Technologies Competition success for their project Utilisation of AI to develop Personalised Treatment Plans for cancer. Funding totalling £792,000 is co-funded by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, and Canada’s National Research Council’s Industrial […]

Target discovery and drug development what comes after CRISPR? By Benedict CS Cross Volume 21 Issue 2 – Spring 2020 For an area of research as important and impactful as drug discovery, it is surprising how often efforts in this field are directed by short-term trends. We have seen an abundance of new tools and […]

Reprogramming the stem cell for a new generation of cures By Dr Alex Davenport, Dr Tonya Frolov and Dr Mark Kotter Volume 21 Issue 2 – Spring 2020 The development of new and effective treatments with the potential to cure, or at the very least ease patient suffering, has been the driving force in biomedical […]

Harnessing the modified proteome for increased diagnostic power By Dr David Bramwell, Dr Steven Laval and Dr Jane McLeod Relevant biomarkers are vitally important in personalised medicine, guiding patient matching to specific therapies for earlier, easier and more effective disease identification and treatment. Here we trace the expectations of ’omicsbased healthcare interventions, from the increased […]

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 […]

By Dr Steve Arlington and John Wise As part of its mission to help members anticipate and prepare for changes in the pharmaceutical industry, The Pistoia Alliance has developed a research paper which sets out to consider what the life science, biopharma R&D and healthcare ecosystem might look like in 2030, in particular how the […]