Boehringer expands neurology activities
Boehringer Ingelheim has expanded its 2014 R&D collaboration with the BioMed X Innovation Center (Heidelberg, Germany) to find new treatment approaches for early intervention of psychiatric diseases.
New target for lung fibrosis discovered
Canadian and Finnish researchers have demonstrated that long immune cell contact to lung tissue turns tissue repair into fibrosis.
Valneva inks $59m JE vaccine supply contract
French vaccine specialist Valneva SE has inked a supply contract with the US Department of Defense for IXIARO its Japanese encephalitis (JE).
VTT turn waste into biofuels and chemicals
Researchers at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd have presented a new gasification-based technique to turn forest industry byproducts into transport fuels and chemicals.
Tissue specific tumour transition needs few cells
German researchers have modeled when cellular alterations inevitably lead to the development of cancer. The transition is tissue-specific and needs only a few cells.
Drug dissociates metastasis precursors in blood
A team of Swiss researchers has identified Na+/K+-ATPase blockers as candidate drugs capable to prevent formation of metastases. In blood, the repurposed drugs identified in a screening dissociated clusters of circulating tumour cells (CTCs), forerunners of metastases.
Policymakers take no action after ECJ mutagenesis ruling
In summer the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that crops created by biological mutagenesis techniques fall under EU GMO legislation. Germanys government and the European Parliament see no need to take action.
Sandoz antiinfectives partner Ares Genetics gets fund
Just in mid-December, antibiotic resistance detection expert Ares Genetics (Vienna, Austria) inked an agreement with Sandoz to use its pathogenome database and bio-IT know-how to develop repurposed and novel antiinfectives that help fight antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Now, the company baged another financing to expand its diagnostic capabilities.
AI provides face read-out of genetic diseases
Experts in artificial intelligence (AI) have created another problem for bioethicists and data protection specialists: their algorithm has learned to identify people with rare genetic syndromes from facial images.
Endothelial disruption: From bench to bedside
Bio-ADM, the very first blood biomarker capable to diagnose when blood vessels become leaky (endothelial dysfunction), is set to make a rapid carrier at intensive care units (ICUs) and emergency departments (EDs) of hospitals. Data from pilot clinical routine testing presented at the 2nd Scientific Symposium on Endothelial Disruption (18. December 2018) in Berlin impressively confirmed results from previous tests on 30,000 patients with acute heart failure (AHF) and severe sepsis indicating that bio-ADM testing improves medical decision making to prevent mortality, organ damage and rehospitalisation. An automated point-of-care (POC) test measuring bio-ADM both as a biomarker and as a companion diagnostic to a therapeutic antibody (adrecizumab) that repairs endothelial dysfunction, will be launched by H1/2019 by Sphingotec GmbH. However, bio-ADM is just the first representative of a full pipeline of diagnostic blood proteins reflecting disturbed signalling pathways underlying disorders of unmet medical need.