Drug Discovery + Development

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…

Revelation Biosciences (Revelation), a clinical-stage life sciences company focused on the development of immunologic-based therapies for the prevention and treatment of disease, and Petra Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company, announces they have entered into a definitive merger agreement for a business combination that will result in Revelation Biosciences becoming a publicly traded company. An…

Thermo Scientific EliA SmDP-S test has been cleared by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for aiding the diagnosis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), the most common type of lupus. This new test enhances specificity without sacrificing sensitivity, leading to a more precise diagnosis while also reducing the number of false positives. “Diagnosing autoimmune…

Fusion Antibodies, a specialist in pre-clinical antibody discovery, engineering and supply for both therapeutic drug and diagnostic applications, announces that is has entered into a commercial collaboration with Eurofins, a Eurofins Scientific SE group company; a provider of products and services to the drug discovery industry. As leading global innovation-driven and customer-focused providers of antibody…

Life science and drug discovery researchers interested in bioluminescent tools will have the opportunity to hear from global thought leaders on the possibilities and applications of luciferase technologies during the upcoming Discover Glo 2021 virtual seminar series. Hosted by Promega and held September 13-16, the series will advance understanding in important therapeutic areas such as…

By Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office Squirting a jet of water through a drop of liquid may sound like idle fun, but if done precisely, and understood thoroughly, the splashy exercise could help scientists identify ways to inject fluids such as vaccines through skin without using needles. That’s the motivation behind a new study…

Recent work by a team of researchers at Queen’s University Belfast and University College London reports on a newly developed strategy for the manufacture of a high drug loaded amorphous solid dispersion (HDASD) using a hot-melt extrusion (HME) based platform(1). Around 80% of new drug candidates that emerge are classified as poorly soluble(2). Enhancement of…

C. Light Technologies, a neurotech and AI company, announces it has received an investment from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) through its Diagnostics Accelerator, a collaborative research initiative supported by Leonard A. Lauder, Bill Gates, the Dolby family, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott among other leading philanthropists. This…

PerkinElmer announced they have four new ready-to-use AlphaLISA KRAS kits, designed to help scientists better understand complex KRAS protein structures and mutations so they can more easily, quickly and precisely identify potential new therapeutic candidates for a wide range of prevalent cancers. Researchers will now be able to choose between PerkinElmer’s HTRF or AlphaLISA assays…

I know how critical it is to be measured when setting expectations. In business, as in life, none of us aspire to overpromise and under-deliver. Indeed, as any business venture must do when communicating with investors and the public, we at Affimed are careful to use so-called “forward-looking statements” in laying out business goals. For…

Lonza and CN Bio have entered into a distribution agreement whereby Lonza will supply a selection of hepatic cells to be prequalified by CN Bio for use in their PhysioMimix Single-and Multi-Organ MPS to transform the way human-relevant pre-clinical data is generated. With prequalified cells, customers can avoid having to trial numerous cell types to…

MOBILion Systems has launched MOBIE, the first commercial High-Resolution Ion Mobility (HRIM) product that addresses characterization challenges faced during biopharmaceutical drug development and quality monitoring. MOBIE provides fast, efficient separations with superior resolution and reproducibility, faster, simpler method development and greater instrument uptime. This highly anticipated new technology will help accelerate and simplify the workflows…

Eikon Therapeutics has announced that it has closed a $148 million Series A financing led by The Column Group with participation from Foresite Capital, Innovation Endeavors and Lux Capital. The company also announced the appointment of Roger M. Perlmutter, M.D., Ph.D., as its new CEO. Eikon’s drug discovery platform evolved from super-resolution microscopy, a ground-breaking…

PerkinElmer announced this week its documentation, workflow and decision-making Signals informatics platform is being expanded to build on existing capabilities in the biologics drug discovery space. This comes through a collaboration with life science software company, Insightful Science. With the collaboration, pharmaceutical and academic research teams can bring together the power of the PerkinElmer Signals…

By Tim Studt, Contributing Editor For 62 years, R&D World and its predecessors have published an annual R&D funding forecast. These reports predict the combined dollar amount of R&D investments expected by industry, government and academia for the upcoming calendar year. Over those years, the publications these reports have appeared in have changed their ownership…