Tag: biotechnology
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Trial Shows Clot Prevention Drug Safe, Reversible
18 December 2015. An early-stage clinical trial of an experimental drug to prevent blood clots during heart surgery shows the drug prevents platelet accumulation, while still safe and temporary to prevent excess bleeding. The study by a team at Tufts University Medical Center in Boston and Sinai Hospital of Baltimore appears in yesterday’s issue of…
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Galapagos Licensing Inflammation Drug in $2.1B Deal
17 December 2015. A biotechnology company is licensing its small molecule drug for treating inflammatory disorders to the biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences in a deal valued at nearly $2.1 billion. The agreement includes Gilead Sciences taking an ownership stake in Galapagos NV, based in Mechelin, Belgium. The deal involves the small-molecule, or low molecular weight,…
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Synthetic Peptide Protects Neurons Damaged by Parkinson’s
16 December 2015. A study by a start-up biotechnology company and university medical center shows an engineered peptide can protect brain cells in lab mice from damage by toxins like those causing Parkinson’s disease. The findings by a team from Longevity Biotech in Philadelphia and University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha are published in…
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Computer Vision Devised as Drug Discovery Technique
15 December 2015. Pharmaceutical chemists at University of California in San Francisco developed techniques for adapting computer vision, like those used in robotics, to early-stage drug discovery. The team led by UC-San Francisco’s Steven Altschuler and Lani Wu describe its discovery in yesterday’s issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology (paid subscription required). Altschuler and Wu,…
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Spin-Off Developing Gene Therapies for Blood Disorders
11 December 2015. A new spin-off company from University College London in the U.K. is developing gene therapies to treat hemophilia and related diseases. The company, Freeline Therapeutics, is raising £25 million ($US 38 million) in its first venture funding round. Freeline Therapeutics is founded and commercializing research by UCL hematology professor Amit Nathwani, who…
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Biotech to Explore Gut-Brain Connections, Raises $44M
10 December 2015. A new biotechnology start-up plans to derive medical and consumer products from interactions between the human gut and brain. Kallyope Inc. in New York City is founded by biomedical researchers at Columbia University and raising $44 million its first venture funding round. Kallyope is designing a technology that harnesses communication pathways between…
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High Blood Cancer Response Rates Found for Cell Therapies
8 December 2015. Two clinical trials of personalized immune cells to treat blood-related cancers — acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in adults — showed high rates of response and remission. Results of the two trials, conducted by University of Pennsylvania medical school, were reported earlier this week at a meeting of American…
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Trial Underway Testing Flesh-Eating Bacteria Drug
7 December 2015. A late-stage clinical trial began enrolling patients to test a new treatment for rare, but dangerous bacterial infections that destroy soft tissue and muscle. The trial is testing AB103, a biologic therapy developed by the biotechnology company Atox Bio in Ness Ziona, Israel. AB103 is designed to treat necrotizing soft tissue infections,…
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Antibodies Reduce Whooping Cough Severity, Infections
3 December 2015. Two engineered antibodies were shown in tests with lab animals to reduce the severity of whooping cough symptoms and white blood cell counts indicating infection. The team from the protein engineering lab of Jennifer Maynard at University of Texas in Austin and Synthetic Biologics, a biotechnology company in Rockville, Maryland, published its…
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CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing Made More Accurate
1 December 2015. Medical and engineering researchers enhanced emerging CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing techniques, reducing erroneous off-target edits with an engineered enzyme. The team from the Broad Institute, a medical research center at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, published its findings today online in Science…