Drug Discovery + Development

Nortis is an innovator in the rapidly emerging Organ-on-Chip (OOC) field, which enables the engineering of living human tissues in microfluidic devices (chips). These chips are highly valuable for both pharma and academia, both of which are looking for novel technologies that will enable them to move away from animal models to improve drug development…

Dotmatics, a maker of R&D scientific software that connects science, data and decision-making, announces the release of its Small Molecule Drug Discovery Solution, an integrated scientific R&D platform with pre-configured workflows and expanded data management capabilities. The solution helps companies innovate more easily and expedites time to deployment by leveraging best practices derived from the…

If 2020 underscored the importance of the pharma industry’s social importance, 2021 demonstrated the industry’s ability to translate R&D into profitable commercialized products. But while strong demand for COVID-19 therapies in 2021 provided unprecedented revenue levels for a handful of Big Pharma companies, it didn’t result in substantial changes in R&D spending.  (Look out for…

Two Rutgers engineers specializing in the process of making drugs derived from living organisms have created an analytical tool they expect will accelerate the discovery and production of biologic drugs that are often at the cutting edge of biomedical research. In an article that is the cover story in the American Chemical Society journal, Analytical…

MilliporeSigma, the U.S. and Canada Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a science and technology company, has announced that its ZooMAb recombinant antibodies platform earned Accountability, Consistency and Transparency (ACT) label from My Green Lab, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a culture of sustainability in science. The first-ever antibody to achieve ACT…

By Rob Taylor, Pharmaceutical Segment Manager, Malvern Panalytical Sometimes you must take things apart to rebuild them. For a child with a LEGO masterpiece, this can be heartbreaking. But in the world of pharmaceuticals, reverse-engineering drugs is crucial for the development of less expensive, more accessible generic products. Chemical and structural reverse engineering, also known…

PerkinElmer. will be at The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting from April 8-13 in New Orleans (booths #1009, #1851 and #909), alongside its partner companies showcasing how genomic and cellular solutions for cancer research can be used to study its mechanisms, improve biomarker discovery, and help drive targeted, therapeutic discovery leading to…

Sepha, the Northern Ireland-based manufacturer of pharmaceutical packaging and equipment, has developed a new compact small-batch blister packaging machine with full traceability and electronic data storage capabilities. The EZ Blister+ meets increased demand for 21 CFR Part 11 compliant micro-batches throughout the blister production lifecycle, from R&D right through to commercial production. It will launch…

Certara’s COVID-19 Vaccine Model allows researchers to study how a vaccine is handled by the human body in computer-generated, virtual populations. It uses biosimulation (computer-aided modeling and simulation integrated with pharmaceutical and biological science) to generate virtual populations with different ages, gender, weight, genetics, diet, illnesses and medications. It can then efficiently run virtual clinical…

GenNext Technologies, a growth-stage company providing biopharmaceutical drug discovery systems and services, announced the receipt of a two year, Phase II SBIR grant for a project titled “In-Cell Automated Flash Oxidation (IC-AutoFox) Protein Footprinting System.” The grant was awarded by the National Institute of General Medical Systems (NIGMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and…

Genomenon Inc., an AI-driven genomics company, announces the completion of a $20 million Series B financing round. The funds will expand the company’s commercial operations and the development of its genomic data hub, which serves genetic testing labs, hospitals, pharmaceutical, and biopharma companies. Genomenon leverages AI (Artificial Intelligence) to organize the world’s genomic knowledge and…

The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending March 4, 2022, closed at 5,058.27 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down 2.21% (or 114.22 basis points) from the week ending February 25, 2022. The stock of 10 RDWI members gained value from 0.18% (Oracle) to 4.79% (Eli Lilly & Co.).…

Thermo Fisher Scientific and Symphogen, an affiliate of the pharmaceutical company Servier, announce the continuation of their collaboration to provide biopharmaceutical discovery and development laboratories with innovative tools and streamlined workflows for efficient characterization of complex therapeutic proteins. Since the collaboration began in 2018, Symphogen has adopted new and innovative instruments and software to improve…

Holographyx has recently been granted a U.S. patent for its Holo-Blister product along with a European Patent for the development of this cost-effective method to apply holograms to the back of blister packs using conventional heat-seal blister packaging equipment. Holo-Blister holograms have been designed so that they will only be visible behind each pill/capsule cavity…

DuPont has launched a new online sales portal tailored to the needs of bioprocessing industry purchasers. The portal handles online sales transactions, with target lead times of less than one week. DuPont’s bioprocessing solutions enable sophisticated purifications and separations for therapeutics and diagnostics, with brands such as DuPont AMBERCHROM and DuPont AMBERLITE being well established…

The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending February 11, 2022, closed at 5,188.11 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down -4.28% (or 231.98 basis points) from the week ending February 4, 2022. The stock of eight RDWI members gained value from 0.02% (Alibaba) to 5.34% (Daimler AG). The stock…

EUROIMMUN, a PerkinElmer company, announces that its EUROIMMUN Anti-Dengue Virus NS1 Type 1-4 ELISA (IgG) (research use only) was cited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of the two-step testing algorithm guidance for pre-vaccination screening for the Dengvaxia vaccine that is used to prevent future dengue disease. According to…

TruTag is the scalable smart medicine solution. Its “edible barcodes,” made of spectrally encoded silica particles, are supplemented by a mobile app that can verify their authenticity, secure the pharmaceutical supply chain and improve patient adherence. Counterfeit drugs are a major problem for the pharmaceutical industry, both in terms of financial impact and in compromising…

The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending January 14, 2022, closed at 5,520.70 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was up 0.89% (or 48.45 basis points) from the week ending January 7, 2022. The stock of 18 RDWI members gained value from 0.03% (Facebook) to 5.11% (Toyota Motor). The stock…

Proscia, the digital and computational pathology solutions provider, and Datavant, which securely connects organizations with health data, have announced a partnership that will provide life sciences companies with digitized pathology data to power the development of novel therapeutics and diagnostics. The partnership brings together Datavant’s privacy-preserving connectivity technology and the largest U.S. health data ecosystem…

Contipharma, a pharmaceutical company specializing in the development and marketing of targeted medical solutions, is now making a saliva-based PCR test available across the entire continent of Africa. The test, which was developed by the University of Liège (ULiège) in Belgium and is CE marked, can detect all known variants of SARS-CoV-2, including Omicron. It…

PerkinElmer has announced that the performance of its SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR assays are not impacted by the emergence of Omicron (B.1.1.529), a variant of concern that was recently identified by the World Health Organization (WHO). There are more than 30 Omicron mutations reported in the S gene of SARS-CoV-2. PerkinElmer’s assays do not target the S…

The Nortis ParVivo Platform, from Nortis, is a stand out in the rapidly emerging Organ-on-Chip (OOC) field, which enables the engineering of living human tissues in microfluidic devices (chips). These chips are highly valuable for both pharma and academia, both of which are looking for novel technologies that will enable them to move away from…

ProQR Therapeutics N.V. has announced a global licensing and research collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly) focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of potential new medicines for genetic disorders in the liver and nervous system. The companies will use ProQR’s proprietary Axiomer RNA editing platform to progress new drug targets toward clinical development and…

Thermo Fisher Scientific‘s clinical sequencing business and AstraZeneca announced they will co-develop next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based companion diagnostics (CDx) to support AstraZeneca’s expanding portfolio of targeted therapies. The companies will collaborate under a multiyear, global agreement. “As the pipeline of targeted therapies expands, the availability of diagnostic tools that can interrogate multiple biomarkers simultaneously will ensure…