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First Minister To Open BioWales 2010
Feb 2010
First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones will open this year’s BioWales, the eighth annual bioscience event at the Vale of Glamorgan Hotel on March 17, just months after being elected leader of the Welsh Assembly Government.
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AAIPharma Services Announces New Additions
Feb 2010
AAIPharma Services Corporation announced today the addition of Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) to its full line of mass spectrometry capabilities. “This new capability along with our commitment to technological advancement and our rich history of scientific excellence will provide our customers with a tremendous platform to support their drug product development efforts," said L. Lee Karras, CEO.
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Flexion Makes Agreements With Major Companies
Feb 2010
Flexion Therapeutics today announced agreements with four major pharmaceutical partners, acquiring the rights to four clinical-stage compounds, and gaining investment from the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company.The agreements with AstraZeneca, Merck Serono (a division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) and one other partner establish for Flexion a mature pipeline of clinically enabled drug candidates focused on inflammatory diseases.
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Proximagen Issues Strategic Update
Feb 2010
Since the £50m fundraising in June 2009, the Company has seen a period of unprecedented corporate activity and undergone a notable transition. During this time, the Company has evolved from specialising mainly in Parkinson’s disease related programmes to the wider area of the CNS in general. The purpose of this announcement is to update shareholders on the progress made since June 2009.
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Synosia Announces Positive Interim Results
Feb 2010
Synosia Therapeutics today announced interim positive data from a Phase IIa clinical study of an adenosine 2a (A2a) receptor antagonist (SYN115) in Parkinson’s disease. The Phase IIa trial was a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study in 24 Parkinson’s patients using doses up to 120mg/day for one week.
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Daiichi Sankyo Submits New Drug Application
Feb 2010
Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited (hereafter; Daiichi Sankyo), today announced that it has submitted a New Drug Application to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare for approval in Japan of CS-8958, a proprietary anti-flu drug. CS-8958 is a laninamivir prodrug that is a Long-Acting Neuraminidase Inhibitor.
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Peakdale Announce Research Collaboration
Feb 2010
Peakdale Molecular Limited (“Peakdale”), a leading research Services Company headquartered in the UK, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Pfizer Limited. Peakdale Molecular, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Peakdale Chemistry Services Ltd, will supply custom synthetic chemistry services to Pfizer onsite at the company’s laboratories in Sandwich, UK.
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Syrris establishes Brazilian subsidiary
Feb 2010
Leading chemistry automation product innovator, Syrris established its new Brazilian subsidiary at the beginning of January 2010. With offices on four continents and an expanding distributor network, the new office in São Paulo will enable Syrris to provide efficient and direct support to its rapidly expanding Latin American customer base.
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MorphoSys Licenses Antibody Library to Shionogi
Jan 2010
MorphoSys AG (FSE: MOR; Prime Standard Segment, TecDAX) announced today that Shionogi & Co., Ltd., Osaka, Japan, has elected to expand its current research license to cover the use of MorphoSys's HuCAL PLATINUM technology in drug discovery. more...
Alizé Pharma Signs Collaboration With Lilly
Jan 2010
Alizé Pharma, a group of companies developing innovative therapeutics for metabolic diseases and cancer, announced today that Alizé Pharma SAS has entered into a research collaboration and license option agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) regarding Alizé Pharma's AZP-01 program, a program focused on the development of unacylated ghrelin (UAG) agonists for the treatment of type II diabetes.
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Pharma Funds Cantab Biopharmaceuticals
Jan 2010
Celtic Pharma Holdings Advisors LLP (“CPHA”), today announces it has made significant funding available to Cantab Biopharmaceuticals Limited (“Cantab”) for the development of improved biological medicines or ‘biosuperiors’, via the fund Celtic Pharma Holdings II LP (“CP2”).
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First Patient Dosed in Hemophilia B Trial
Jan 2010
Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB) and Swedish Orphan Biovitrum (STO: BVT) today announced that the first patient was dosed in a registrational, open-label, multicenter trial designed to evaluate the safety, pharmacokinetics and efficacy of the companies' long-acting, recombinant Factor IX Fc fusion protein (rFIXFc) in hemophilia B patients.
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Cyntellect Expands Network Across Asia
Jan 2010
Cyntellect, Inc., a privately-held life sciences company commercializing products to advance the study of cell biology, stem cell research, biopharmaceutical production, and drug discovery, today announces availability of the full Cyntellect product portfolio, including the Celigo™ Adherent Cell Cytometer, the LEAP™ Cell Processing Workstation, and related kits and consumables, to the rapidly expanding life science sector in Asia.
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UK Medical Firms Sweep Up Awards At Arab Health 2010
Jan 2010
A London firm improving the quality of life for cancer-sufferers, a Nottingham firm that provides alarms for sleepwalkers and dementia-sufferers, and an Uxbridge firm that allows kidney patients to have dialysis at home are among the UK winners of awards at Arab Health 2010, the largest and most prestigious medical trade fair in the Middle East.
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Celtic Pharma & PolyTherics Announce Investment
Jan 2010
Celtic Pharma Holdings Advisors LLP (“CPHA”), the advisor to Celtic Pharma Holdings II LP (“CP2”), together with PolyTherics Limited (“PolyTherics”), innovators in precision engineering of proteins to improve their pharmacokinetic properties, today announce an investment by Leverton Licence Holdings Limited (“LLH”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CP2, into a research programme to develop a novel biopharmaceutical molecule.
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Impact Of Nanotechnology On Life Sciences
Jan 2010
The Nanotechnology Knowledge Transfer Network (NanoKTN), one of the UK’s primary knowledge-based networks for Micro and Nanotechnologies, will again be convening the Nano4Life Conference. Nano4Life 2010, organised by the NanoKTN in collaboration with The Wellcome Trust, will explore the key areas within the life sciences where nanotechnology offers the opportunity to advance healthcare and improve product discovery and development.
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BioServe and Fox Form Strategic Alliance
Jan 2010
BioServe and Fox Chase Cancer Center today announced the formation of an exclusive strategic alliance aimed at easing a bottleneck in oncology research programs. Through this agreement, BioServe will supplement biomaterial from its Global Repository with samples from the prestigious Fox Chase Cancer Center, giving researchers access to an even larger and more dynamic repository of clinical-grade biospecimens.
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Yorkshire Bank Becomes Corporate Partner of Biocity
Jan 2010
Yorkshire Bank is to become a corporate partner of BioCity, the rapidly growing bioscience incubator business park in Nottingham. The bank, which is based in Castle Meadow Road in the city centre, will support the growth of bioscience and healthcare technology companies at BioCity and across the East Midlands by offering financial and business advice services.
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Labcyte Expands and Launches Into New Markets
Jan 2010
Today Labcyte introduced two pre-calibrated liquid class packages for use with its award-winning Echo® acoustic dispensers and POD™ 810 plate assemblers, which move liquids with sound. This expanded capability will allow its high throughput screening customers to not only transfer compounds in DMSO, but enables the transfer of a wide range of liquids necessary to assemble miniaturized assays for biochemical and cell-based screening.
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CyGEL™ Sets Zebrafish Screening Method
Jan 2010
The thermo-reversible hydrogel mountant CyGEL™ (Biostatus Ltd., UK) offers a new, simplified method for the micro-injection of zebrafish embryos developed by scientists at the UCD Conway Institute, Dublin. Live embryos are placed in CyGEL, injected and then gently recovered into embryo medium.
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Sartorius Introduces Revolutionary Microscope
Feb 2010
Sartorius Stedim Biotech today announced the introduction of ChemoMetec’s NucleoCounter® NC-3000™, a user-friendly system for fast and precise automated detection of cells by specific counting of nuclei giving reproducible and accurate counts.more...
World’s 1st SmartStrip Developer Raises £2m
Feb 2010
Microvisk Technologies, the developer of the patented technology for point-of-care monitoring of bloodcoagulation for patients taking the drug Warfarin, is pleased to announce that it has raised £2m by attracting three new investors and retaining support from its current private and institutional investors. more...
Structure-Based Drug Design will crystallisation ‘chaperones’ make all proteins crystallisable?
By Dr Chun-wa Chung
Macromolecular x-ray crystallography is usually an integral part of small molecule drug discovery for soluble targets. Recent advances in the crystallography of membrane proteins have opened up the prospect of extending structure-based methods into these well validated target classes.
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A Perspective on Scientific Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry
By Dr Joseph B. Bolen
With a tarnished reputation and a lack of sustainable innovation this article argues that, maybe, it is time for the pharmaceutical industry to look more closely at balancing the commercial needs of their organisations with the requirement to create the correct culture and environment for human innovation and creativity.
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GE Healthcare to Host ‘Current Trends in Microcalorimetry and Biacore Symposium’
Addressing functional characterization of biomolecular stability and interactions
GE Healthcare will host ‘Current Trends in Microcalorimetry and Biacore Symposium 2009’, on October 18-21 at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore, MD, USA. The symposium offers delegates an exciting opportunity for exchange and discussion on all the latest developments in label-free molecular interaction analysis.more...
SMI's Inaugural qPCR & Transcriptional Profiling Conference
June 15-16 2009
With increasing applications in research to provide sensitive quantitative measurements of gene expression, including SNP genotyping, mutation detection and quantification, and gene dosage studies, quantitative polymerase chain reaction technology (qPCR) could soon be the standard for determining the genetic changes in response to a pharmacological agent. more...
Screen and Profile Kinases and ATPases with ease using a new Bioluminescent ADP Monitoring Assay
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Image - based Quantification of Endothelin A Receptor Translocation using the Opera
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Progress in the implementation of Label-Free Dectetion - part 1: cell-based assays
Fall 2008
Overall it remains unclear whether label-free will break into main stream cell-based lead discovery or will mostly fill the gaps that other technologies do less well?
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Natural product pharmaceuticals - the third generation
By Dr Melanie McCullagh
Compounds derived from natural products have made a big impact on the pharmaceutical industry. Of the 1,010 NCEs approved between January 1981 and June 2006, 43 were unaltered natural products (NPs) and a further 232 (23%) were second generation NP derivatives1.
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TECHNOLOGY, bane or bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry?
By Dr Stephen Naylor, Adam W. Culbertson and Dr Stephen J. Valentine
While the adoption of new technologies into the drug development process has often been seen as a panacea this article argues that, without a true understanding of the complexities how can we expect it to be the bonanza to the pharmaceutical industry and the cure for all its woes?
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Prediction v Attraction
By Professor Malcolm Young
A substantial number of very valuable drugs have gone, or are about to go, off patent; too few good new premium drugs are coming through to market
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Microwave-Assisted Orgainc Synthesis an Enabling Technology with Disruptive Potential.
Fall 2008
Since the original publications on the benefits of conducting organic reactions in a microwave by Gedye1 and Majetich2 in the mid-80s, the uptake of this technique was sluggish at best for the next 12-14 years.
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High Throughput Screening, High Content Screening, Primary and Stem Cells
By Dr Richard M. Eglen
Over the past decade, the use of cell-based assays has accelerated in modern drug discovery. Indeed, the majority of assays in either target validation or lead identification/optimisation all now employ cell-based technologies.
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Progress in the Implementation of Label-Free Detection - part 1: cell-based assays
Summer 08
Progress made in the use of impedance and optical grating technologies for label-free detection of cell-based assays where examined in HTStec’s recent Cell-Based Label-Free Detection Trends 2008 report.
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Biologists Flirt with Models
By Gordon Webster
The enormous challenge posed by the complexity of biological systems represents a potential intellectual impasse to researchers and threatens to stall future progress in basic biology and healthcare.
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High content screening – the next challenge: effective data mining and exploration
By Dr Kurt Zingler and Dr Stephan Heyse
The use of high content screening within HTS is growing and with many past hurdles now overcome, the need for effective tools for data analysis is becoming paramount.
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Biomarker signal definition
By Dr Gordon F. Kapke and Dr Nigel Brown
Due to the numerous challenges in the industry, pharmaceutical companies are examining all aspects of the drug development process and rebuilding theirassociated business models as necessary. more...
The Personalized Medicine Coalition
The Case for Personalized Medicine, Second Edition
The Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC), representing a broad spectrum of academic, industrial, patient, provider, and payer communities, seeks to advance the understanding and adoption of personalized medicine concepts and products for the benefit of patients. more...
Reshaping the landscape of cancer drug discovery and development
By Dr Paolo Paoletti
The landscape of cancer drug discovery and development is shifting – adjusting and reshaping itself in response to the huge rush of scientific knowledge
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Human ES Cell Derived Functional Cells as Tools in Drug Discovery
By Dr Petter Björquist, Dr Peter Sartipy, Dr Raimund Strehl and Dr Johan Hyllner
The drug discovery process is extremely-time consuming and expensive. Consequently, novel approaches for these processes and for reducing late-stage attrition are of great value for the pharmaceutical industry.
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The Microplate Market Past, Present and Future
By Dr Peter Banks
Microplates and the peripheral markets of liquid handling and detection technologies exist within almost all laboratories performing assays. This article discusses what, if any, are their growth expectations and whether there are new technologies on the horizon that could make the microplate obsolete.
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Letting the Target Determine your Compound Acquisition Strategy
By Dr John Harris
With compound libraries likely to remain the cornerstone of hit and lead discovery for the foreseeable future, this paper seeks to summarise current and future approaches to optimal library design and compound acquisition, using examples and experimental evidence of the success, limitations and weaknesses of target-led approaches in comparison with diversity-screening alternatives.
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Removal of Contaminating Genomic DNA in QRT-PCR using a Shrimp Nuclease
Nicky Quipse, Saima Naveed Nayab and Ian Kavanagh
DNA contamination can often occur in quantitative reverse transcription – polymerase chain reactions (QRT-PCR), and should be removed in order to avoid false positive results. DNase I is commonly used for removing DNA contamination, but this has a relatively long and harsh protocol which introduces an extra step between the isolation of RNA and the QRT-PCR reaction itself, as well as increasing the risk of RNA degradation due to the harsh inactivation conditions. An endonuclease from arctic shrimp Pandalus borealis has properties that make it useful for the removal of contaminating DNA. The endonuclease activity of the enzyme is specific to double stranded DNA, which therefore allows the enzyme to be added directly into the reverse transcription step. Unlike DNase I, the shrimp nuclease is easily inactivated at high temperatures, such as those used for the RT deactivation / hot start incubation step of a QRT-PCR reaction, and therefore can be used to selectively degrade double stranded DNA, leaving single stranded DNA and RNA intact.
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The Effect of Amplicon Charcteristics on the success of Fast QPCR
Gerwyn Jones, Sryana Kapavaparu, Saima Nayab and Ian Kavanagh
Employing fast QPCR cycling protocols is a simple and effective way of maximising throughput by reducing run durations. Fast cycling protocols can easily be achieved by reducing the temperature step dwell times.It has been reported that the use of fast QPCR protocols can result in a loss of sensitivity and greater inter-replicate variance with some assays. It is therefore important to realise that speeding up cycling protocols can be detrimental to the quality of results, but not in all cases. The factors which determine whether an assay can be successfully employed using fast cycling conditions are poorly understood.
The effect of three target amplicon characteristics on the success of fast QPCR was investigated using a panel of characterised assays. The amplicon characteristics focused on in particular were base-pair length, GC content and minimum ΔG at 60°C, the latter being a measure of the severity of amplicon secondary structure at the annealing temperature.
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