German mRNA company Curevac AG has appointed Pierre Kemula as Chief Financial Officer. Kemula joins Curevac from medtech firm Pixium Vision, where he was also responsible for financial activities.

The European Patent Office’s decision to speed up examination of patent applications to 12 months without any transition period is set to ruin biotech SMEs financially and may send a blocking signal to innovators. 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Tobias Prize 2016 to stem cell researcher David Bryder of Lund University for his “groundbreaking hematopoietic stem cell discoveries”.

With globally at least 30 million of cases per year, sepsis is a major health threat for which a specific adjunctive sepsis therapy beyond antimicrobial treatment, surgical source control and supportive intensive care measure is still missing.

Roche is making up lost ground in immuno-oncology. The Swiss company’s PD-L1 directed immunotherapy atezolizumab is more effective in combatting lung cancer than standard chemotherapy.

Well, those bloody idiots in the UK managed to do it – talk themselves from decades of hysteria about straight bananas (entirely fabricated by one B Johnson during his time as a journalist in Brussels) into actually voting to leave.

The new joint venture Synvina is positioned in the market for drop-in bioplastics with advanced product characteristics.

With  about 38,000 attendees and 2,500 exhibitors, CPhI worldwide in Barcelona has broken another record. Personalised 3D printed pills and hypothesis generation using big data were only two trends reported.

Dublin-based protein immunotherapy developer Prothena has appointed Gene Kinney as its new President and Chief Executive Officer. Kinney has also been appointed to Prothena’s Board of Directors.

The fate of the bioeconomy in Europe remains undecided. The evaluation of the European Commission’s bioeconomy strategy plus action plan has been delayed.