Tag: biotechnology
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Virus Particles Rebuilt to Boost Immunotherapies
22 September 2015. Engineers at Stanford University redesigned a hepatitis virus from the inside out to make it a better vehicle to stimulate the immune system for treating disease. The team led by chemical and bioengineering professor James Swartz published its results yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (paid subscription required). Swartz…
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Regeneron to Develop Antibody Therapy for Ebola
21 September 2015. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. received a contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop an engineered antibody designed to treat Ebola infections. The initial $17 million contract from HHS’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority or BARDA covers initial development and testing work on the therapy, but the program…
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Immunotherapy Shown to Clear Some Cervical Lesions
17 September 2015. A clinical trial testing a vaccine designed to clear up cervical lesions or sores before they become cancerous, found women receiving the vaccine eradicated more of these lesions than those receiving a placebo. Results of the intermediate-stage trial, funded by Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. that makes the candidate vaccine, appear in today’s issue…
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Platelet-Like Nanoparticles Boost Therapeutic Effects
16 September 2015. Engineers and medical researchers at University of California in San Diego designed biocompatible nanoparticles disguised as blood platelets, which they found increased the particles’ targeting and medicinal effects. The team led by engineering faculty Liangfang Zhang and Shu Chien published its proof-of-concept study today in the journal Nature (paid subscription required). The UC-San Diego researchers are seeking to…
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Spin-Off Formed to Develop Brain Disorder Therapies
16 September 2015. A new enterprise developing biologic therapies for disorders of the brain and nervous system is underway, spun-off from the acquisition in July 2015 of Naurex Inc. by the pharmaceutical company Allergan plc. The new company, Aptinyx Inc. in Evanston, Illinois will have many of the same team at Naurex, itself a spin-off enterprise from Northwestern…
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Celgene, Antibody Network Partner on Cancer Targets
15 September 2015. The biopharmaceutical company Celgene Corp. is collaborating with a consortium of university protein engineering labs to identify targets for antibodies that harness the immune system to treat cancer. The deal provides Celgene with an option to license antibody candidates addressing cancer targets from the consortium, known as Recombinant Antibody Network, for which…
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Seattle Children’s, Biotech Collaborate on Gene Editing
11 September 2015. The biotechnology company bluebird bio and Seattle Children’s Research Institute are partnering on gene editing technologies to treat inherited pediatric diseases. Their agreement calls for bluebird bio — the name is spelled in all lower-case characters — based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Seattle — to provide $3 million for research on these…
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Research Group, CureVac Partner on AIDS Vaccine
10 September 2015. An organization encouraging development of AIDS vaccines and the pharmaceutical company CureVac are collaborating on creating a potent AIDS vaccine technology. Financial and intellectual property aspects of the partnership between the not-for-profit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, or IAVI, and CureVac in Tubingen, Germany were not disclosed. IAVI sponsors research and development of…
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Hemophilia Therapy Candidate Given Breakthrough Status
4 September 2015. A synthetic antibody designed to prevent bleeding episodes among people with the most common type of hemophilia received a breakthrough therapy designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The pharmaceutical company Roche says FDA assigned the designation its biologic therapy code-named ACE910, now being tested in clinical trials. Hemophilia is an inherited…
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Genome Editing Biotech Gains $70M in Venture Funds
1 September 2015. Intellia Therapeutics, a developer of therapies that edit human genomes to fix inherited disorders, raised $70 million in its second round of venture financing. OrbiMed HealthCare Fund Management led the funding round for the Cambridge, Massachusetts enterprise, with new and current investors taking part. Intellia Therapeutics, founded in November 2014, is a…