REGISTER NOW Broadcast Date:  Tuesday, May 14, 2024 Time:  8:00 am PDT, 11:00 am EDT, 17:00 CEST Developing a biosimilar drug requires screening many samples originating from different cell lines to select the most appropriate ones for further process development. Each sample needs to be characterized by their critical quality attributes, such as glycosylation or charge variants, which can be used to identify potentially harmful modifications in the samples. Common techniques used to determine the charge variants of a sample, such as ion exchange chromatography, are time- and m ..read more

The University of Delaware broke ground on construction of the SABRE Center, a pilot scale biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility that will sit next to the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), which is housed in UD’s Ammon Pinizzotto Biopharmaceutical Innovation Center. The SABRE Center will complement the biopharmaceutical research and development activities of NIIMBL and the larger biopharmaceutical industry in Delaware and the broader region, according to UD officials. The project is supported with federal and state funding&nb ..read more

Researchers at Duke University developed a blood test that they showed could successfully predict knee osteoarthritis (OA) at least eight years before tell-tale signs of the disease appeared on x-rays (radiographic knee OA; RKOA). In their newly reported study the team validated the blood test, which identifies a panel of osteoarthritis biomarkers, and showed that it could predict development of disease as well as predict disease progression, which the team had demonstrated in earlier work. The researchers say their work advances the utility of a blood test that would represent an improvement ..read more

Episode 19 (April 26, 2024): This week, the GEN editors celebrated DNA Day by sharing some stories about their favorite observations and applications of DNA research. Featuring Kevin Davies, PhD (Editorial Director, GEN), John Sterling (Editor in Chief, GEN), Uduak Thomas (Senior Editor, GEN), Alex Philippidis (Senior Business Editor, GEN), Fay Lin, PhD (Senior Editor, GEN Biotechnology), Jonathan Grinstein, PhD (Senior Editor, GEN), and moderated by Corinna Singleman, PhD (Managing Editor, GEN and IPM). Listed below are key references to the GEN stories, media, and other items discussed in t ..read more

Two independent research teams have successfully regenerated mouse brain circuits in mice using neurons grown from rat stem cells. Both studies, using interspecies blastocyst complementation to study brain function and evolution, offer valuable insights into how brain tissue forms and present new opportunities for restoring lost brain function due to disease and aging. “This research helps to show the brain’s potential flexibility in using synthetic neural circuits to restore brain functions,” said Kristin Baldwin, PhD, a professor at Columbia University. Baldwin’s team restored mouse olfactor ..read more

Hundreds of protein-ligand interactions have been identified through a collaboration between the CEMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Pfizer. Georg Winter, PhD, and his team at CEMM have merged molecular biology with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques to delve into the big world of how small molecules, or ligands, interact with proteins within cells. The study, titled “Large-scale chemoproteomics expedites ligand discovery and predicts ligand behavior in cells,” was published in Science. While popular understanding o ..read more

Researchers from the Ohio State University College of Medicine have discovered in mice that conditions such as diabetes and vascular diseases commonly diagnosed in people with spinal cord injuries, can be linked to abnormal post-injury neuronal activity that causes abdominal fat tissue compounds to leak and pool in the liver and other organs. The researchers also discovered that a short course of the drug gabapentin prevented the damaging metabolic effects of the spinal cord injury. Their findings are published in Cell Reports Medicine in an article titled, “α2δ1-mediated maladaptive sensory p ..read more

Michelle Chen, PhD, Insilico Medicine Chief business officer Insilico Medicine is heading to the clinic with its seventh pipeline candidate discovered and designed using generative artificial intelligence (AI), a treatment for methylthioadenosine phosphorylase (MTAP) deleted cancers, which account for 15% of all cancers. The company is planning to launch a Phase I multicenter, open label study of ISM3412 following FDA approval of its IND application. The study will be designed to assess the drug in patients with locally advanced and metastatic solid tumors. All patients will receive oral daily ..read more

Decades of research have linked pesticide exposure to Parkinson’s disease (PD) risk, and researchers have sought to understand why some individuals with high exposure develop the disorder while others do not. A study by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) scientists has now found that certain rare genetic variants might help to explain the relationship between pesticide exposure and risk of Parkinson’s disease. The team analyzed genetic data from hundreds of patients with PD who had long-term exposure to pesticides typically used on cotton crops, in comparison with PD patients who had ..read more

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, PhD, Xaira Therapeutics founding CEO, and Bing presidential professor, head of laboratory at Stanford University AI-based drug developer Xaira Therapeutics has been launched with more than $1 billion in capital and a self-described ambitious commitment to transform drug discovery and development by creating new and more effective treatments faster. Xaira said it plans to advance an unspecified “multiple” drug programs—the company did not identify its therapeutic areas or targets of interest—by combining AI with top-tier product development and biological and clinical data ..read more