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‘Therapeutic EVs’ in a Nasal Spray Could One Day Treat Alzheimer’s Disease
Bio-IT World | It sounds too good to be true: a nasal spray that delays Alzheimer’s-related behavioral and cognitive problems a decade or more after initial diagnosis. But promising first steps in that direction have already been taken using “therapeutic EVs” (extracellular vesicles) restricting the activation of inflammatory cytokines in the brain of mice.
Dec 5, 2024
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Building Tiny Biocompatible Batteries with Heart-Defibrillating Power
Bio-IT World | In a paper published last week in Science, researchers from the University of Oxford, UK, demonstrate how microprocessors can be created from soft, biocompatible, nanoliter-scale hydrogel droplets. This work builds on a study published last month in Nature Chemical Engineering introducing poppyseed-sized droplet batteries that can be used to power such systems for various bionic and biomedical applications.
Dec 4, 2024
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Barcelona Research Institutions Launch Joint Program on Evolutionary Medical Genomics
Bio-IT World | Three research institutions in Barcelona have teamed up to launch the world’s first Joint Program on Evolutionary Medical Genomics. The initiative, launched last month at an inaugural symposium in Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), is a collaboration between the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva
Dec 3, 2024
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Follow the Money: Seaport Therapeutics Glyph Platform, Pathos AI Expansion, More
Bio-IT World | Seaport nets funds for its Glyph technology platform; Pathos AI plans to accelerate its AI-powered drug development platform; Alentis Therapeutics pursues antibody drug conjugates; and more.
Nov 26, 2024
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Answer ALS, Cedars-Sinai Collaboration, Single-Cell Protein Profiling, ChapsVision Acquires Sinequa, More
Bio-IT World | Answer ALS and Cedars-Sinai have announced the completed availability of the largest ALS patient-based induced pluripotent stem cell and bio data repository; Scale Biosciences and Revvity’s business, BioLegend, announced the availability of a first-of-its-kind TotalSeq Phenocyte single-cell protein profiling solution that supports customers by more easily identifying and characterizing rare cell subtypes; ChapsVision has acquired Sinequa; and more.
Nov 25, 2024
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How Digital Chemistry Will Improve Cross-Functional Collaboration In The Biopharma Industry
Bio-IT World | Digital chemistry is the term given to recent developments in using digital control and big data approaches for designing molecules, optimizing and controlling chemical reactions, and performing complex chemical processes under digital control with sensor feedback. A fundamental development in digital chemistry is the evolution of the concept of chemputation, which allows chemical reactions to be easily done robotically using a general purpose programming language for chemical synthesis.
Nov 22, 2024
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‘Secret Shares’ of Patient Health Data Enable Secure Multiparty Research
Bio-IT World | Scientists in Europe collaborated on the first international-level clinical study using secure multiparty computation (MPC), which enabled cross-border cooperation without sharing any personalized health data. The cryptographic method traces back to the late 1970s but has been “severely underused” up until now because it’s computationally complex and few data security experts are familiar with the technology.
Nov 20, 2024
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Recursion, Novo Nordisk Release New Chemistry Foundation Model
Bio-IT World | In a paper published last week in Nature Communications, teams from Recursion and Novo Nordisk created a new foundation model for chemistry called MolE. Benchmarked for absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) using the Therapeutic Data Commons, MolE outperformed previous models.
Nov 19, 2024
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Much Like a Crime Scene, Cancer’s Evolution Can be Reconstructed
Bio-IT World | Investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine have combined several powerful technologies to reconstruct how cancer spreads from the prostate to metastatic sites elsewhere in the body. Bioluminescence imaging, CRISPR/Cas9-based barcoding, and innovative computational methods for tracing the movement of cancer from tissue to tissue were used in creating a roadmap revealing the small number of aggressive cells that seed cancer’s often deadly migration.
Nov 14, 2024
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Blueprint of the Human Spliceosome Could Help Find Cancer’s Achilles’ Heel
Bio-IT World | The spliceosome, the cellular machinery that catalyzes the process of splicing in genes, was discovered nearly five decades ago and has been successfully leveraged in the development of therapies for rare diseases such as spinal muscular dystrophy where concerns about side effects tend to be secondary to correcting the underlying pathology. The question now is how to move the strategy to more complex diseases involving more than a single gene and splicing mutation.
Nov 13, 2024
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New Diagnostic Tool for Identifying the Effects of Antifibrotic Therapy in Breast Cancer
Bio-IT World | In recent research, scientists at the University of Arizona have developed a diagnostic tool, the MeCo Score, which evaluates metastatic risk in early-stage breast cancer by analyzing how cancer cells respond to the stiffness of surrounding tissue. This tool leverages RNA sequencing data from tumor samples to identify a "mechanical conditioning" (MeCo) signature, giving insights into cancer cell adaptations within the tumor microenvironment.
Nov 12, 2024
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Foundations for Change: A Framework for Transforming R&D Outcomes With AI
Bio-IT World | For AI and data-driven drug discovery to have a tangible impact on R&D success, a change in the culture is as important as any investment at a data, model, and validation level. Until quite recently, the perceived value of AI in drug discovery and development failed to match the hype.
Nov 8, 2024
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PacBio’s Pink Desktop Platform, $500 Genome Chemistry
Bio-IT World | This week at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting, Pacific Biosciences unveiled both its new SPRQ chemistry—pronounced “spark”— and its newest sequencing platform, Vega, a desktop, long-read sequencer with all the compute on board. Also it’s pink.
Nov 7, 2024
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New Data Suggests a More Expansive View of Heart Health Lipids
Bio-IT World | The traditional LDL and HDL cholesterol tests may soon be obsolete as new research suggests they provide an incomplete view of heart health compared to other lipid molecules circulating in the blood. This shift stems from a recent study led by Dr. Cristina Legido-Quigley, a systems medicine expert at King’s College London and Steno Diabetes Centre, which analyzed lipids in children with obesity.
Nov 4, 2024
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AI Points to Drug Repurposing Opportunities for Diseases Without Cures
Bio-IT World | Harvard scientists have succeeded in using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify promising drug candidates for diseases for which there are no examples of successful treatment. The graph foundation model, known as TxGNN, opens untold opportunities to repurpose drugs for the thousands of diseases afflicting small populations and exacting a huge toll in terms of both economics and human suffering.
Oct 31, 2024
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New 10x Instruments, Merck Acquires Modifi Biosciences, New Immunogenicity Bioanalysis Features, Partnerships, More
Bio-IT World | Modifi Biosciences has been acquired by Merck; Sapio Sciences announces the addition of new immunogenicity bioanalysis features to its industry-leading lab informatics platform; and more.
Oct 30, 2024
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Follow the Money: Small Molecule Solutions AI Platform, MIT, Basecamp Research Collaboration, More
Bio-IT World | Terray Therapeutics will enhance their integrated AI platform, tNova, which identifies and optimizes novel small molecule solutions to the most complex problems; Basecamp Research, in collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. David R. Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, plans to advance their data collection and strengthen their AI capabilities; and more.
Oct 29, 2024
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AI Is Nothing Without An AI-Ready Data Strategy
Bio-IT World | Applied artificial intelligence (AI) is already transforming drug discovery research and development, accelerating the journey from lab to lifesaving therapies, and both the reality and the hype are very well known. Less obvious—almost 90% of the iceberg—is the critical role played by data.
Oct 25, 2024
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Cleveland Clinic Researchers Find Hope in Immune Cells’ Reaction to Immunotherapy
Bio-IT World | There is much we still don’t know about the relationship between immune cells and cancer cells and how they interact and influence each other over the course of immune activating cancer therapies. Researchers at Cleveland Clinic are exploring these relationships and reported their results last month in Nature Medicine.
Oct 23, 2024
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Illumina’s New Desktop Sequencing Series Is Fast, Cheap, Simple
Bio-IT World | Illumina unveiled its MiSeq i100 Series of sequencing systems last week during an online customer event, comprising two new benchtop instruments: MiSeq i100 and MiSeq i100 Plus Systems. The MiSeq i100 will be available to ship globally in 2025.
Oct 17, 2024