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.

Renewed focus on cancer: COVID-19 vaccine company BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) and Ryvu Therapeutics S.A., located in Krakow (Warsaw Stock Exchange: RVU), a Polish clinical-stage cancer therapeutics development company, announced that the companies have entered into a research collaboration for several multi-target immunotherapy programmes, as well as an exclusive licensing agreement for Ryvu’s STING agonist portfolio as stand-alone small molecules.

AstraZeneca announced an agreement to acquire Neogene Therapeutics Inc. (Neogene), a global clinical-stage biotechnology company spezialised in next-generation T-cell receptor therapies (TCR-Ts) that offer a novel cell therapy approach for targeting cancer. The acquisition delivers an initial payment of $200m on deal closing, and a further up to $120m in both contingent milestones-based and non-contingent consideration.

Novo Nordisk A/S invests €726m to expand facilities and to produce APIs to supply the company’s global clinical trials.

SOTIO Biotech a.s. has exercised its first of five exclusive, target-specific options for antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) SOT106 under its agreement with LegoChem Biosciences Inc.

London-based computer vision specialist V7 Ltd has baged $33m in Series A financing co-led by AI-focused Radical Ventures and Temasek.