Therapeutics

StemTek and tebu-bio announce European partnership for Cell2Sphere

19 January 2017 | By Niamh Marriott (Drug Target Review)

Cell2Sphere is the first simple 3D tissue culture kit for labs interested in more accurate, scalable and dynamic experimental research.

Application Note: An Easy-to-Use Assay to Measure Target Cell Death by Antibody Dependent Cellular Phagocytosis (ADCP)

16 January 2017 | By DiscoverX Corporation

With an increasing industry focus on antibody drugs, there is an ever greater need for functional bioassays that interrogate the various mechanisms of action (MOA) for the therapeutic antibody...

Kymab receives $9m R+D grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

9 January 2017 | By Niamh Marriott (Drug Target Review)

The monoclonal antibody biopharmaceutical group Kymab announced today that it has received a $9m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate the development of novel vaccines and therapeutics for infectious diseases, including HIV.

Nanohyperthermia softens tumours to improve treatment

3 January 2017 | By Niamh Marriott (Drug Target Review)

The mechanical resistance of tumours and collateral damage of standard treatments often hinder efforts to defeat cancers.

Molecular Devices

Practical application of in vivo optical imaging in biotherapeutic biodistribution analyses

14 September 2016 | By Dr Norman Peterson (MedImmune/AstraZeneca)

As advances in protein engineering technology have led to the production of novel and more structurally complex biopharmaceuticals, the ability of these drugs to smoothly traverse the body and arrive at their intended target site has become more unpredictable...

A*STAR and MSD team up to advance peptide therapeutics

19 July 2016 | By Niamh Louise Marriott

A*STAR and MSD have formed a two year collaboration aimed at improving cellular delivery of macrocyclic peptides...

Mechanism-informed phenotypic screening – the missing link for cancer drug discovery?

8 June 2016 | By David S. Bailey (IOTA Pharmaceuticals), Sheraz Gul (Fraunhofer-IME SP)

Cancer cells exhibit huge phenotypic diversity, with many well-defined phenotypes, such as invasion, deregulated proliferation and immune evasion, contributing to disease outcomes, making them uniquely amenable to phenotypic screening1...

Pain therapeutics: New interview released with the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR)

14 April 2016 | By SMi Group

SMi’s 16th annual Pain Therapeutics conference returns to London this May and is thrilled to have Dr Geert Jan Groeneveld, Research Director from the Centre for Human Drug Research, as one of the featured speakers for 2016...

Whitepaper: Identification of specific PD-L1 Affimer inhibitors with therapeutic potential

23 March 2016 | By Avacta Life Sciences

Affimer® proteins are unique affinity proteins that exhibit high affinity and high specificity binding across a range of reaction conditions...

Computational methods for drug repositioning

17 February 2016 | By Anaum Rashid (University of Sunderland), Hannah Smith (University of Sunderland), Ken McGarry (University of Sunderland)

Bioinformatics and computational techniques are now experiencing increased attention as a means of improving the costly and time-consuming drug development process...

The frightening emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria

17 February 2016 | By Jean-Marie Frere (CIP Universite de Liege), Sebastien Rigali (CIP Universite de Liege)

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is on the rise and a return to the ‘pre-antibiotic’ era has become a frightening possibility. Various factors are responsible for this situation: the overuse of antibiotics in human medicine and animal husbandry, insufficient public funding for research into fundamental bacteriology including resistance mechanisms, and a…

Finding a cure for neglected tropical diseases with cell-based assays

14 February 2016 | By David Shum (Institut Pasteur Korea)

Neglected tropical diseases pose a significant threat to public health and affect nearly one billion people in tropical and sub-tropical regions throughout the world. There is a pressing need to identify new therapeutics for NTDs and many developed nations are participating in drug discovery efforts...

Antibody fragment technology and avian IgY antibodies: a powerful combination

5 February 2016 | By Carol Harley (IBMC and i3S), Ricardo Vieira-Pires (University of Coimbra)

Recombinant monoclonal antibodies or antibody biologics have been successfully developed as diagnostic and therapeutic agents...

The challenges associated with ‘de-risking’ early-stage therapeutic targets

3 December 2015 | By Ahmad Kamal (MRC Technology), Catherine Kettleborough (MRC Technology), Debbie Taylor (MRC Technology), Tim Chapman (MRC Technology)

The pharmaceutical industry is searching for novel drug targets that could produce the next generation of ‘first-in-class’ therapeutic agents. The challenge for academia is to identify and translate such targets and to provide starting points and confidence in the underlying science. The aim should be to generate evidence that modulation…