News and Trends 12 Oct 2016 Transgene teams up with big Players against HPV Head and Neck Cancer Transgene is partnering with Merck and Pfizer to develop a combined therapy for head and neck cancer squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) caused by human papiloma virus (HPV) infections. A successful outcome will let the team access a €2B market niche. Transgene has been struggling for a while: last year it had to fire 40% of its workforce […] October 12, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 12 Oct 2016 Italy has new €100M Factory for Biobased Butanediol With an industry worth €3.5Bn, butanediol is an important chemical intermediate. Novamont has recently opened the first industrial plant to produce bio-butanediol from sugars, using engineered E. coli. Biotechnology is a key driver in replacing fossil fuels with renewable raw materials, so companies and academia are busy creating ways to produce different chemicals from biomass. Examples […] October 12, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Denise Neves Gameiro Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 12 Oct 2016 Will Aprea live up to the Hype of its €46M fundraising? Aprea raised a huge €46M for a first-in-class drug that targets the deadliest form of ovarian cancer. The company just started Phase II trials after positive results from Phase I. But will it be able to outperform all its competitors? Aprea is a spin-out company from the Karolinska Development, the portfolio company of the Institute, in Sweden. It became […] October 12, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 11 Oct 2016 UK Upstart to sign Huge Deal with Takeda in End Run around Antibody Therapies Crescendo Biologics, a small UK-based startup, has made an almost €1B deal with Japanese giant Takeda for its Humabody technology. Crescendo Biologics may seem like a small fish, but it has caught the attention of a host of blue-chip investors like Sofinnova Partners. Its Humabody platform has recently attracted the Japanese pharmaceutical giant, Takeda, whose subsidiary, […] October 11, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 11 Oct 2016 World Mental Health Day: How is Biotech Helping the Cause? Biotech is one of the main forces driving the development of effective therapies to treat neurological and mental disorders. For World Mental Health Day yesterday, we want to share with you some of the latest technologies that address these conditions. Yesterday, October 10th, was World Mental Health Day: it is dedicated to raising awareness of neurological and mental disorders […] October 11, 2016 - 4 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 10 Oct 2016 Big Pharmas Battle to be the Lung Cancer Leader at ESMO Merck, Roche and BMS have unveiled updated results in Copenhagen as the companies duke it out for the leadership in lung cancer therapies. The conference of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) is underway in Copenhagen, and big pharma’s efforts to cure lung cancer are stealing the show. Three titans, Roche (Genentech), Merck and […] October 10, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 10 Oct 2016 Overseas Deaths in the Clinic come as a Blow to Boehringer Ingelheim Boehringer Ingelheim has swiftly dumped its olmutinib collaboration with Hanmi following news of deaths in South Korean Phase II trials. An investigation by the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has linked several deaths to olmutinib, a lung cancer drug launched by Hanmi. Sound familiar? Boehringer Ingelheim just signed a deal to acquire the […] October 10, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 10 Oct 2016 The CRISPR Revolution is here, but how can we make it Useful? By this point, you can’t have escaped hearing about CRISPR. First discovered in the 1980’s, the repeated sequences and their function in bacterial defense systems remained a mystery until almost 10 years ago, when it was hailed as the biggest scientific discovery of the century. Since then, scientists have leveraged the adaptable, heritable mechanism to develop the most powerful gene-editing technology […] October 10, 2016 - 6 minutesmins - By External Contributor Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 10 Oct 2016 Meet the French CEO who wants to Break Barriers to Drug Delivery The objective of the French biotechnology company, Vect-Horus, is to leverage its technology, VECTrans, to facilitate the delivery of drugs into the brain and other organs. For this innovation, the company recently received the Frost & Sullivan 2016 Leadership award, which independently recognizes companies for demonstrating excellence in developing innovative technologies and practices within an industry. […] October 10, 2016 - 5 minutesmins - By Marie Godar Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 8 Oct 2016 Microbial Donuts at the Vienna Design Week, fancy a bite? Here’s the Recipe! This week’s bioartist has a very sweet exhibition at the Vienna Design Week. Taylor Caputo has traveled from the other side of the pond to showcase her current project: custom donuts engineered with synthetic biology. Six talented artists are showing their work at Possible Tomorrows, an exhibition at the Vienna Design Week that combines art with Biotech and SynBio to experiment […] October 8, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 7 Oct 2016 Do we hear a Tinnitus Cure? This techno-loving CEO might have one… It’s Friday, and here in Berlin, we’re ready for the club. A German company, Sonormed, is developing an app that can reduce the consequent ringing in our ears. Sonormed’s co-founder and CEO, Jörg Land, loves techno, and he started a company to help his fellow beat lovers with their common affliction of tinnitus. His soon-to-be […] October 7, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 7 Oct 2016 Meet the ‘Haut-Couturiers’ of Bioengineering It’s time to ride the slopes and land in the French alpine capital, Grenoble, to meet our Biotech of the week, BGene Genetics. This start-up is changing the bug factory sector! BGene has developed a method to edit the chromosomes of a bug to produce proteins rather than inserting a plasmid, and this proprietary technology […] October 7, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Jerome Topsent Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email