Dementia is estimated to affect 850,000 people in the UK and costs the nation around £23bn a year Innovate UK has awarded ten new projects over £6m in funding to identify, develop and commercialise biomarker clinical tools and technologies for dementia and neurodegeneration. Through Innovate UK’s Small Business Research Initiative, the competition will aid in enhancing clinical trials and precision therapies for patients living with dementia. Estimated to affect 850,000 people in the UK, dementia is a general term for the impaired ability to remember, think or make decisions, which is economically responsible to cost £23bn a year. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, affects one in 14 people over the age of 65 and one in six people over the age of 80. In alignment with the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission, a government-led effort to develop new precision dementia therapies and solutions in the UK, the ...
Neutropenia, a decrease in neutrophils (a type of white blood cell crucial for fighting infections), is a frequent side effect of certain cancer treatments. This condition elevates the risk of infections, including neutropenic sepsis—a potentially fatal reaction to infection and a severe complication of chemotherapy. Identifying the signs of neutropenic sepsis can be challenging, leading to a stressful and expensive treatment process. Consequently, all chemotherapy patients feeling ill are advised to seek emergency care to check for neutropenic sepsis. Unfortunately, half of these patients do not receive antibiotics quickly enough, while the other half, not at risk of neutropenic sepsis, unnecessarily visit the emergency department. 52North Health Ltd. (Cambridge UK) has developed NeutroCheck, a groundbreaking approach aimed at enhancing the safety and well-being of cancer patients. This innovation combines a finger-prick blood test with an AI-powered digital platform, allowing patients to evaluate their neutropenic sepsis risk at home. This affordable, ...
Singapore, March 19, 2024, WuXi Biologics (“WuXi Bio”) (2269.HK), a leading global Contract Research, Development and Manufacturing Organization (CRDMO), today announced that it has broken ground on its new 13.5-hectare CRDMO center in Tuas Biomedical Park, Singapore. The center will provide integrated biologics research, development and manufacturing services. WuXi Biologics announced a USD$1.4 billion (S$2 billion) investment in Singapore in 2022. The CRDMO center will be the first-of-its-kind in Singapore, offering end-to-end biologics research, development and manufacturing solutions upon completion. It will add 120,000L of manufacturing capacity to WuXi Biologics’ global network, and is expected to employ 1,500 staff. The site will be equipped with WuXi Biologics’ proprietary technical platforms, along with industry-leading technologies such as single-use technology to provide clients with time-and cost-efficient services. In line with WuXi Biologics’ Environmental, Social and Governance strategy, the site will implement sustainable concepts in the design and construction of the center, deploy ...
The centre will deliver free training, outreach materials and programmes The University of Birmingham is set to lead UK-wide virtual reality (VR)-assisted training in medicines manufacturing to address critical skills demand in life sciences. Set to benefit future medicine and vaccine makers, the new RESILIENCE Centre for Excellence for UK Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre aims to deliver free training, outreach materials and programmes. Supported by £4.5m of funding from Innovate UK and the Office for Life Sciences, the centre will be led by an academic consortium of UK universities, including University College London, Teesside University and Heriot-Watt University. The training centre aims to work with healthcare and pharmaceutical organisations to provide a single-entry point for training and career input, which includes a pipeline of continuing professional development courses. Hundreds of students across the UK are set to benefit from the training developed by the RESILIENCE Centre, including VR and mixed ...
The platform delivers digitalised patient data to improve clinical trials and development Phesi has announced that its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven Trial Accelerator platform has reached a critical milestone of now containing global data from more than 100 million patients. The volume will allow sponsors to access data on patients with over 4,000 indications, plan more successful trials and simulate clinical development activity more accurately. Phesi’s Trial Accelerator works to deliver digitalised patient data to enhance or replace those collected from clinical trials. Across the past two decades, data has been collated from product and disease registries, electronic health records, medical claims data and data gathered from around 100,000 dynamically updated sources. The platform powers the Phesi Patient Access Score, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Data Service and the Digital Patient Profile. “We have been gathering and structuring a wealth of data for sponsors and clinical trial planners,” said Dr Gen Li, ...
Sosei Heptares’ schizophrenia drug candidate addresses a novel, difficult-to-drug target for neurological disorders. Boehringer Ingelheim can exercise its option on the small molecule following a Phase 1 test expected to yield data in 2025. By FRANK VINLUANAntipsychotic medications used to treat schizophrenia don’t work for all patients, and even when they do, side effects lead many people to stop taking them. Sosei Heptares is developing a novel drug that could bring patients better efficacy along with fewer side effects, and that potential has caught the interest of Boehringer Ingelheim. The German pharmaceutical company has inked a deal for an exclusive option on Sosei Heptares’s schizophrenia drug candidate, which is in early clinical development. Under deal terms announced Monday, Boehringer is paying its new partner €25 million up front. Sosei Heptares’s schizophrenia research address a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) called GPR52. This particular receptor is highly expressed in the brain, making ...
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide, with over 2.3 million new cases and approximately 685,000 deaths reported in 2020. Currently, mammography, ultrasound, MRI, and biopsies are the primary methods for diagnosing breast cancer. Despite their effectiveness, these techniques have several drawbacks, such as high costs, limited accessibility, potential inaccuracies in early detection in young women with dense breast tissue, invasiveness, and radiation exposure risks, especially for radiation-sensitive patients. Given the increasing prevalence of breast cancer in women, there is an urgent need for more innovative and efficient detection methods. Now, a saliva test that screens for breast cancer is showing promising results in experimental testing. Developed collaboratively by researchers from the University of Florida (Gainesville, FL, USA) and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (Hsinchu City, Taiwan), this innovative hand-held device can detect breast cancer biomarkers using just a small saliva sample. The device operates by applying ...
Cyberattacks remain a formidable threat to healthcare providers, with hackers’ tactics getting more sophisticated by the day. Policymakers are trying to combat this. For example, New York Governor Kathy Hochul released a proposed set of cybersecurity regulations in November that require hospitals to establish new policies and procedures to protect themselves from ever-intensifying cyber threats. And a couple weeks ago, HHS published guidance outlining voluntary cybersecurity performance goals for the healthcare sector. While this initial guidance is voluntary, these goals will likely be used to inform upcoming HHS rulemaking. In its guidance, HHS outlined 10 key goals for strengthening providers’ cybersecurity: mandating basic cybersecurity training, mitigating known vulnerabilities, boosting email security, using multifactor authentication, ensuring strong encryption, requiring unique credentials, revoking credentials for departing workforce members, separating user and privileged accounts, establishing incident response plans, and vetting vendors’ cybersecurity. These guidelines are a starting point toward a more secure and ...
In January 2024, the Beijing Hemophilia Association Rare Disease Care Center and Shanghai RAAS Blood Products Co., Ltd., after negotiations, reached a deep cooperation agreement in the field of hemophilia charity and public welfare. They will work together to promote the development of charitable and public welfare activities related to hemophilia in China. Shanghai RAAS Blood Products Co., Ltd. was established in 1988 and went public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in June 2008. It is a leading domestic blood products enterprise that integrates the collection of raw plasma, research and development, production, and sales of blood products. Their main products include human albumin, intravenous human immunoglobulin (PH4), human coagulation factor VIII, human fibrinogen, human prothrombin complex, human thrombin, and human fibrin sealant. Shanghai RAAS is one of the few domestic blood product manufacturers capable of extracting six components from plasma and has the most comprehensive range of coagulation factor ...
A novel artificial intelligence (AI) tool, designed to interpret medical images with exceptional clarity, is set to revolutionize the way clinicians approach disease diagnosis and image analysis. This advanced tool, named iStar (Inferring Super-Resolution Tissue Architecture), was developed by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, USA). It can assist healthcare professionals in diagnosing and treating cancers that might otherwise remain undetected. iStar offers an in-depth view of individual cells and a broader look at the full range of human gene activity, potentially revealing cancer cells that were nearly invisible earlier. This tool could play a crucial role in confirming whether cancer surgeries have fully removed malignancies and provide automatic annotations for microscopic images, marking a significant leap toward molecular-level disease diagnosis. One of the standout capabilities of iStar is its automatic identification of crucial anti-tumor immune formations known as “tertiary lymphoid structures,” ...
Go to Page Go
your submission has already been received.
OK
Please enter a valid Email address!
Submit
The most relevant industry news & insight will be sent to you every two weeks.