Tag: genomics
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Baxter Acquiring Hemophilia Gene-Therapy Biotech Company
3 April 2014. Baxter International, a pharmaceutical and medical products company in Deerfield, Illinois is buying Chatham Therapeutics LLC, a developer of gene therapy to treat hemophilia. Under the agreement, Baxter will acquire outstanding LLC interests in Chatham for $70 million, but future milestone payments are also possible. The acquisition gives Baxter access to all…
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Trial Shows Gene Test Improves Lung Cancer Diagnostics
2 April 2014. Allegro Diagnostics Corp. in Maynard, Massachusetts says results from a clinical trial testing its genomic technique for diagnosing lung cancer more accurately predicts development of the disease among former smokers than standard bronchoscopies working alone. The company plans to discuss the findings next month at an American Thoracic Society meeting in San…
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EMD Serono, Pfizer, Broad Institute Partner on Lupus Markers
1 April 2014. EMD Serono, a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company Merck in Rockland, Massachusetts, is joining with the drug maker Pfizer and Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT to identify genomic biomarkers of two types of lupus. The research is funded by EMD Serono and Pfizer, but financial aspects of the agreement were not…
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Drug Discovery Consortium Harnesses Sequencing, Big Data
27 March 2014. A collaboration among the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, European Bioinformatics Institute, and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute aims to tap the power of genomic sequencing combined with bioinformatics to boost the success rate of discovering safe and effective medicines. Financial details of the partnership creating the new Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation were not disclosed. The consortium…
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Lab Chip Device Developed to Test Engineered Plant Traits
26 March 2014. Engineers at Iowa State University in Ames created a device about the size of a microscope slide that can quickly test the effects of genetic changes on plant characteristics, rather than growing sample seeds in soil. The team led by electrical and computer engineering professor Liang Dong, with colleagues from Iowa State…
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Genetics Group, Analytics Firm Collaborate on Diagnostics
19 March 2014. A genetics research center at University of Utah in Salt Lake City and Omicia Inc., a genomic analytics company in Oakland, California are developing systems to make genomic analysis a routine medical diagnostic procedure. The $6 million in funding for the USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery comes from the university and Utah…
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Bristol-Myers Squibb, Biotech in Cancer Drug Discovery Deal
17 March 2014. Bristol-Myers Squibb, a pharmaceutical company in New York, and Five Prime Therapeutics in South San Francisco, California are collaborating in discovery of cancer immunotherapies. The deal can be worth as much as $350 million to Five Prime Therapeutics, in which Bristol-Myers Squibb will also get a 5 percent stake. Five Prime Therapeutics…
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Trial Underway to Test Mutation Fix for Cystic Fibrosis
12 March 2014. An early-stage clinical trial is underway testing the safety and chemical activity of a drug designed to correct a genetic mutation causing cystic fibrosis. The study, sponsored by N30 Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Boulder, Colorado — the drug’s inventor — aims to enroll up to 40 healthy adults. Cystic fibrosis is an inherited disease…
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Biotech Partnership to Develop Non-Ricin Castor Plants
12 March 2014. Precision BioSciences Inc. and Novo Synthetix, biotechnology companies in Durham, North Carolina, are collaborating on a new type of castor bean, without the ricin poison that makes the beans difficult to process and market. Financial and intellectual property aspects of the deal were not disclosed. Beans from castor plants (Ricinus communis) have the potential to…
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Early Trial Shows Gene Editing Potential to Treat HIV/AIDS
6 March 2014. Researchers from University of Pennsylvania, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the biotechnology company Sangamo BioSciences showed the company’s gene-editing technology could engineer the immune cells of HIV-positive patients to resist infection and decrease their viral loads. Results of the early-stage clinical trial led by Penn immunologist Carl June will be presented…