SARS-COV-2 exposed our vulnerability and strategic weakness at European level, in terms of biotechnological manufacturing capacity.
One of the most distinguishing hallmarks of tumours is their ability to avoid immune recognition. New immunotherapies have focused on breaking down those barriers, leading to treatment breakthroughs for blood cancers. While these therapies have shown great promise for some indications, we still lack effective therapies for many others. A novel route to address this is to the restore innate immunity’s ability to fight cancer.
At the CPHI, the world’s largest pharmaceutical event, which attracted 40,405 visitors this year, it became evident that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an extremely positive impact on the (bio)pharmaceutical sector. A new CPHI annual survey shows how business will develop in the future. Particularly, the prospects for CDMOs and CROs are excellent.
Unit-dose?The SARS-CoV2 pandemic caused 6.3 million deaths and contaminated 545 million people across the world. In spite of the rapid development and approval of vaccines, the shortages of consumables like glass vials limited the distribution of prophylactic vaccines. Blow-Fill-Seal (BFS) is an alternative solution with advantages that could play an important role in vaccine distribution worldwide.
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.
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.
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.
Precision gene delivery remains one of the greatest challenges in modern medicine. A Basel-based biopharma company, Vector BioPharma, has accepted the challenge and, with cutting-edge technology from the University of Zürich, is developing a revolutionary new way to deliver the right genes to the right place at the right time. Vector BioPharma aims to be the pioneer in delivering future medicines with this technology, now under development in multiple areas of urgent medical need.
As a late-stage investor focusing on the European bioeconomy, the ECBF is carefully assessing the maturity of any technology, but more important than maturity is the ability to reach commercial scale. What governs that scale-up, and how do we assess it? What role does the TRL score play, and what key questions do we ask? An excerpt into a framework.