© BioLamina AB

French-US-based investment specialist Lauxera Capital Partners announced today that it has invested €17m in Swedish cell culture company BioLamina AB (BioLamina)

Seat of Orbit Discovery © Orbit Discovery

Orano Med SAS and Orbit Discovery Ltd announced a collaboration to develop Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapies for cancer cells and develop novel radiopharmaceuticals.

Picture: Engitix Ltd

London-based Engitix Ltd has appointed a new Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). Christopher Stevenson, Ph.D. took over the position at the beginning of September.

Picture: LISAvienna/Beranek

Eva Schlintl joined the LISAvienna team at the beginning of September. Most recently, she managed the LISA Life Science Austria programme of Austria Wirtschaftsservice Gesellschaft mbH (aws).

© BIH

Non-profit foundation BioInnovation Institute (BII) has unveiled its latest commitment to driving innovation and growth within the life science sector. Six promising companies will receive crucial financial support through BII’s Venture House programme.

marius walter - wikipedia.org

At a council meeting, a majority of EU agriculture ministers have supported the draft regulation on new genomic technologies (NGT) proposed by the EU Commission in early July.

Illustration of the Cullin-RING complexes bound to the antibodies, that can thus be located within the cell. © Lukas Henneberg, MPI of Biochemistry

German researchers have developed a new way to detect the about 300 cullin-RING ligases (CRLs) which specifically trigger destruction of specific proteins in the cell.

Impacts of climate change © USDA, image adapted from Application of Gene Editing for Climate Change in Agriculture (2021)

According to Swiss bioethicists, deregulation of genetic engineering rules for plants optimised through targeted mutation and cisgenetics will make little contribution to climate protection by 2050.

Figure 1. The flow chart of CAR-NK therapy.

CAR-T therapies represent a new successful strategy for the treatment of hematological malignancies; however, recent studies have revealed some limitations, including the occurrence of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), neurotoxicity, and cytokine release syndromes (CRS). This has prompted researchers to look for alternative, safer cells, such as natural killer (NK) cells 1. NK cells are lymphocytes that kill tumor cells and virus-infected cells non-specifically, without prior sensitization. CAR-NK therapy involves the modification of NK cells with mature chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology to exploit their unique target cell recognition mechanism and broad tumor-killing ability. Figure 1 illustrates the CAR-NK therapeutic strategy 1. Compared with CAR-T therapy, CAR-NK therapy has numerous advantages, such as lower GVHD and significantly reduced CRS toxicity and immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome toxicity, which enhance overall safety 2, 3. In addition, NK cells have multiple tumor recognition sites, thus potentially reducing antigenic escape failure 4.

A diagram showing how the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine works. A chimpanzee adenovirus is used in the ChAdOx1 viral vector, engineered to match the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. © University of Oxford

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the University of Oxford have entered into a strategic partnership to accelerate the development of globally accessible vaccines against endemic outbreaks.