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 continues collaboration to support biopharmaceutical discovery and development
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…
Holo-Blister, an anti-counterfeiting system for pharmaceutical blister-packs, gets patents in U.S. and Europe
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 invests in bioprocessing supply chain to enhance drug development purchases
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…
Inflation will be R&D game changer in 2022, in this week’s R&D power index
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…
US Centers for Disease Control guidance includes EUROIMMUN assay in its two-step testing algorithm for dengue virus
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…
R&D 100 winner of the day: TruTag’s Edible Barcodes
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…
R&D increasing in new fields despite rising inflation, in this week’s R&D Power Index
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 and Datavant partner to connect pathology data with health data ecosystem for life sciences R&D
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 launches saliva-based Omicron detecting PCR test in Africa
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…
Omicron variant does not impact detection capability of PerkinElmer’s RT-PCR assays
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…
R&D 100 winner of the day: Nortis ParVivo Platform
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 announces Axiomer RNA editing licensing and research collaboration with Lilly
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 and AstraZeneca to co-develop NGS-based companion diagnostics
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 to become publicly traded through merger with Petra Acquisition
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…
FDA clears Thermo Scientific diagnostic test for lupus for use in U.S.
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 joins Eurofins Discovery to support preclinical drug discovery research
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…
Bioluminescent research tools showcased at global seminar series
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…
High-speed camera captures a water jet’s splashy impact as it pierces a droplet
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…
Hot-melt extrusion produces predictable, high drug-loading amorphous solid dispersions
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 receives funding and support from the ADDF to pilot early retinal biomarker study
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 expands KRAS oncology drug discovery assays with new ready-to-use AlphaLISA kits
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…
Advancing Immuno-Oncology by believing in the potential of the immune system to restore patients’ innate ability to fight cancer
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 announce distribution agreement providing prevalidated hepatocytes for use on innovative organ-on-a-chip range
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…
MOBIE accelerates biotherapeutic drug development and multiomic biomarker discovery
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…