The partnering event BioFit2022 took place in Strasbourg, France on November 29th and 30th as well as online on December 7th and 8th. It reflected on challenging times in the pandemic, ‘survivors’ of the economic threats, and adressed the preparation and perseverance needed to deal with challenges today and in the future. The bottom line: dynamic partnerships and more financing opportunities on the horizon.

The French company Standing Ovation uses precision fermentation to create the protein that gives cheese its unique properties. With his pitch, co-founder and CEO Frédéric P’ques took the prize at the start-up pitch of the Industria Biotech.

Sino Biological and Ainnocence have joined forces to establish an AI-enabled platform for antibody affinity maturation.

Valneva has appointed Dipal Patel as new Chief Commercial Officer and Management Board member.

With a new expansion coming online in Copenhagen, AGC Biologics is offering more capacity in Europe for mammalian biologics projects using innovative single-use bioreactor technology. This is the latest in a string of new investments from the global CDMO to expand capacity and upgrade technology at its sites in Europe, Japan and the United States.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed perception of the value of ­rapid ­vaccine production, followed by multi-billion investments across the globe. While nanomedicines are receiving attention for enhancing stability and targeted activity of APIs, their broad availability ­currently suffers from the same production bottleneck as mRNA vaccines. Leon-nanodrugs, a pharma technology company, is developing a disruptive approach to unlock high-speed vaccine production.

Vienna is one of Europe’s most dynamic innovation hubs in the life sciences. End of ­September, the life science community met to celebrate LISAvienna. For 20 years, LISAvienna has been acting as the cluster’s central point of contact. In close collaboration with Austria’s support and funding ecosystem, the platform accompanies and supports bioentrepreneurs through the ups and downs of their journey to transfer innovative business ideas into viable products and services.

Viral Vectors?Commercial-scale manufacturing demands a high yield of potent rAAV products. Understanding the metabolism during cell growth, especially at high densities, molecular effects of transfection or infection in production is vital. In addition, the choice of producer cell type determines the PTMs of the AAV capsid and potency. Successful trials in tweaking cell factories’ genes to boost rAAV particle yields set the direction for further development.

The European Commission has now recommended concrete steps that, while not yet final, would require Illumina to "swiftly" reverse its controversial $7.1bn acquisition of Grail.

Our species – modern humans, or homo sapiens sapiens – has ever striven for progress. And progress was greatly enabled by fire, a fundamental chemical phenomenon that allows the fast release of large amounts of energy.