Entries by Thomas Gabrielczyk

Spanish biotech sector attracts investors

Spanish biotech sector:?European investors more and more often take a look at Southern European biotech companies. Spain, in particular, is now harvesting the fruits of long-term public support started a decade ago, which stimulated the establishment of a dynamic ecosystem. Today, foreign investments are at an all-time high and start-ups find a well-prepared basis for growth.

DMD drug aids heart failure patients

Italfarmaco SpA’s Givinostat, a small molecule histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor in clinical testing against several forms muscular dystrophies, is also an option to treat heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), a form of congestive heart failure that affects 50% of heart failure patients.

New target could minimise transplant risks

German researchers have identified a target to switch off intestinal acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which occurs in about 50% of leukemia patients that have been given a allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT).

EU General Court rejects industry’s confidentiality claims

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has won a landmark battle about the amount of data from clinical dossiers that may be made public. The European Court of Justics (EJC) rejected the demand of three drug developers not to publish what they called confidential information under the EMA’s transparency rules. 

FIND funding diagnostics to fight AMR

Global health product development partnership FIND (Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics) has announced four major diagnostics projects to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in resource-poor settings. 

Cancer is a gate-opener to data sharing

A brand-new survey conducted by auditing and consulting firm PwC and Strategy& has found out that 80% of data protection-prone Germans would share their data in case of being diagnosed with cancer. The results show that cancer could act as a gate-opener to approaches in personalised medicine that depend on the accessiblity of patient data.

Bacterial duo triggers colorectal cancer

US and Dutch researchers have found that carcinogenic E. coli and B. fragilis versions in the gut of patients who developed precancerous polyps early in life trigger development of colon cancer by secreting proinflammatoy signals, depleting mucus and inducing DNA damage.

CRISPR corrects clustered DMD mutations

Using CRISPR-Cas 9 genome editing, US and German stem cell researchers have corrected clustered mutations in the dystrophin gene in heart mucle cells obtained from induced pluripotent stem cells of patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

EPO bows to pressure from industry

Following critisism from the industry, the European Patent Office has drafted a proposal to allow exemptions to its Early Certainty Initiative. Industry associations had pressed the EPO not to limit the time to grant a patent to 12 months arguing it would have detrimental effects on the life sciences sector.

EU ombudsman soft-sells safety concerns on HPV jabs

A complaint against the EMA’s handling of a referral procedure related to potential side effects of Sanofi/MSD’s HPV vaccine Gardasil and GSK’s HPV jab Cervarix, filed by the Nordic Cochrane Centre and physicians, has been rejected by the European Ombudsman.