Interview 4 Sep 2019 Overcoming Clinical Setbacks to Fight Insect-Borne Diseases Sometimes things don’t go your way in the biotech industry. The CEO of Valneva, Thomas Lingelbach, shared his experience of migrating from big pharma to biotech, and how his first biotech company weathered phase III failures to develop vaccines for neglected diseases. Once confined to the less developed regions of the world, many insect-borne diseases […] September 4, 2019 - 9 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 30 Jul 2019 The First Approved NASH Therapy? Genfit is poised to become the first company to get a treatment for NASH to market — something that could happen as early as 2020, should its late 2019 phase III trial results be positive. I spoke to Dean Hum, the current COO and CSO of Genfit, to find out more about the company’s 20-year […] July 30, 2019 - 6 minutesmins - By Helen Albert Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 22 Jul 2019 Turning Shelved Drugs into a New Promise for Immuno-Oncology After working for 12 years at Merck, Catherine Pickering decided to take a risk and create iOnctura, a spin-out company exploring a new application in immuno-oncology for a drug candidate that had been shelved. In the last decade, there has been a massive boom in the development of cancer therapies that use and enhance the […] July 22, 2019 - 5 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 3 Jul 2019 Meet the First Company in the Brand New Field of Epitranscriptomics A whole new therapeutic area is taking medical research by storm. In Cambridge, UK, the company Storm Therapeutics is leading the development of the first treatments to target a new layer of genetic information encoded in the RNA. The term ‘epitranscriptomics’ did not exist a decade ago. It was coined in 2012, when scientists started […] July 3, 2019 - 5 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 12 Jun 2019 How Vaccines Could One Day Beat HIV Vaccines are humanity’s biggest achievement against infectious diseases. But could they defeat HIV, a particularly crafty virus? José Luis Cabero, CEO of Spanish biotech AELIX Therapeutics shared his experience developing an HIV vaccine at Labiotech Refresh in Barcelona. The concept of a vaccine is simple — priming the immune system against a pathogen so that […] June 12, 2019 - 5 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 5 Jun 2019 How Spain is Building a Strong Biotech Ecosystem The biotech sector is rapidly gaining momentum in Spain. At Labiotech Refresh in Barcelona, Raúl Martín-Ruiz, Partner at the venture capital firm Ysios Capital, shared his experience investing in Spain’s biotech industry over the last decade. Ysios Capital made its first investment in 2008. The recipient was a cell therapy company based in Madrid. Then […] June 5, 2019 - 4 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 30 May 2019 Taking Inspiration from Plants to Prevent Mold from Ruining Crops Olga Dubey founded the Swiss startup Agrosustain with the intention to bring forth a natural alternative to chemical pesticides against mold. She shares how it all started and her company’s plans to end the massive amounts of food waste that mold is responsible for. “Mold is everywhere, so it’s something that is very hard to […] May 30, 2019 - 4 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 28 May 2019 Getting Ahead of the Pack in the CAR-T Field Celyad is one of many companies in the immuno-oncology field seeking to take the lead in the development of a new generation of CAR-T cell therapy that outperforms its predecessors Yescarta and Kymriah in both efficacy and safety. Filippo Petti, CEO of Celyad, shares the company’s strategy to get ahead in such a crowded field. […] May 28, 2019 - 6 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 23 May 2019 Why Clinical Trial Design Can Make or Break Your Company Andreas Wallnöfer spent over 20 years working on drug development at Roche before moving to BioMedPartners to apply his expertise to biotech investment. At our recent Labiotech Refresh event in Zurich, he explained why good clinical trial design can be key to a biotech’s success. Wallnöfer was one of the pioneers of ‘proof of concept’ […] May 23, 2019 - 7 minutesmins - By Helen Albert Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 16 May 2019 Taking a Drug to Market “Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint” Based in Zurich, Molecular Partners is developing a new class of drugs that can address the complexity of cancer. At Labiotech Refresh in Zurich, CEO Patrick Amstutz shared what he’s learned on the journey to take the company where it is today. After completing a PhD at ETH Zurich, Amstutz founded Molecular Partners with a […] May 16, 2019 - 4 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 13 May 2019 Putting DNA Repair on the Map Niall Martin is on a mission to put DNA repair on the map. He has already gone pretty far along the way to doing this, as the leader of the team that developed the blockbuster cancer drug Lynparza. He is now seeking to repeat this early success at Artios, where he is CEO. Martin talked […] May 13, 2019 - 8 minutesmins - By Helen Albert Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 9 May 2019 A 20-Year Journey to Nail Down an Undruggable Cancer Target The ultimate goal of cancer research is to bring to the market a drug that improves the treatment of patients lacking options. Laura Soucek, CEO of the startup Peptomyc, shares the story of her journey to take a cancer treatment against an until now undruggable target to the clinic. It all started when Soucek was […] May 9, 2019 - 5 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email