“MUST
READ”
- Craig Venter,
multi-millionaire maverick, says he can help you live a better, longer
life. Roger
Highfield asks how.
DISRUPTION,
REVOLUTION
The
Top Ten Stories in Genetics, 2015: A Bacterial Editing System Goes Viral
Genetic modification was not invented in 2015. DNA was edited before CRISPR/Cas
9, just as books were printed before the Gutenberg Bible. Is it crazy to
compare CRISPR to t…
The
Next Next Thing in Sequencing “Nanopores may soon help revolutionize the fields
of DNA and protein sequencing,” asserts Derek M. Stein, Ph.D., associate
professor of physics and engineering, Brown University.
- A revolutionary
DNA sequencing instrument which could help break the chain of
transmission of viruses such as Ebola and Zika has
been developed by British scientists.
- The pocket-sized
MinION device was developed by an Oxfordshire science company, and
results published on Wednesday in the
journal Nature show it was able to help
identify the unique genetic sequence of the Ebola virus in patients
within 24 hours.
- The early signs
for Editas, which will trade under the ticker symbol “EDIT,” are good.
The company sold 5.9 million shares at $16 apiece,
in line with the projections it
set last week. That means Editas has raised $94.4 million
and is valued at close to $600 million right off the bat, even though
it’s still likely a year away from testing its first experimental
treatment in a human clinical trial.
TOOLS/TECHNIQUES
Synthetic
Biology Primer: In Conversation With Richard Kitney, Part 1 “Synthetic biology”
has always been a puzzling term to me. Prosthetic limbs are synthetic. Knee
replacements are synthetic. Splicing the gene from one organism into another, a
pra…
- Optimization of
cell culture parameters is a vital part of biotherapeutic process
development, but it is not without its challenges. One such challenge is
the selection of a scalable and appropriate cell culture feed that can
work in combination with the established cell line and a given base
medium to achieve the desired titer and growth characteristics.
HEALTH/MEDECINE
Dr.
David Spetzler on Clinical Sequencing Dr. Spetzler, Chief Scientific Officer at
Caris Life Sciences, will be a speaker at the upcoming Personalized Medicine
World Conference Silicon Valley.
- Major UK research
institutions have outlined a twenty-year cancer research future for
London. The London Cancer Hub is intended to become a world-leading life
science campus that, according to plans published today, will potentially
create 13,000 jobs and deliver at last two extra cancer drugs every five
years.
COMPANIES
The
markets may be softening on biotech, but overall the sector remains in an
incredibly strong environment.Biotech has been witnessing the greatest
five-year bull run in the industry’s history. The optimism for the sector and
for new biomedical product innovation has manifested itself across the public and
private markets, fundraising metrics, initial public offerings (IPOs) and
secondary offerings and partnering activity. A quick review of the summary data
underscores that exuberance:
Eight
Things You Might Not Have Known Until Editas Filed Its S-1 Here’s a CRISPR
first: Editas Medicine of Cambridge, MA, has filed paperwork for an IPO. Its
S-1 document became public today, marking the first one from a company working
to turn the …
- Most Big Pharma
have their own program. Boehringer-Ingelheim
for example is partnering with BioMedX to run a new program with
researchers from Heidelberg. Now the 3rd largest Pharma company in
France, Pierre Fabre,
has also made a move into the field.
Pierre
Fabre will accompany its biotech and research laboratories specialized in
oncology and dermatology, primarily in France and Europe. This
program aims to speed up the development process of new molecules from
preclinical to clinical phases, and will last between 12 and 24 months.
