The Bio Report

The development of mRNA therapies is allowing drug developer to pursue targets once considered undruggable. Anima Biotech has developed a platform that allows it to use small molecule that selectively control mRNA and can decrease or increase the translation of proteins. The approach has broad applicability as evidenced by the company’s pipeline, which includes experimental therapies for oncology,...

The biopharmaceutical industry has long struggled with R&D productivity. Long time industry strategic consultant Mike Rea, founder and CEO IDEA Pharma, thinks he’s hit on a possible solution. Taking a cue from the tech industry, Rea in May announced the launch of Protodigm, which he describes as a contract skunkworks company. The approach is intended to allow a multi-disciplinary team work autonom...

While cities across the country have lifted COVID-19 restrictions and public gatherings have returned, the lack of effective treatments for people who develop severe reactions to the virus continues to pose a public health problem. The situation is acute in less developed nations where vaccination levels are low, and hospitals continue to be overrun with patients. Researchers at Mount Sinai earlie...

Osteoarthritis is a painful, progressive disease of the joints for which there is no cure. The condition affects more than 32.5 million adults in the United State and the incidence is growing as a result of aging, obesity, and sports injuries. Flexion Therapeutics is developing an experimental gene therapy to treat the condition. Rather than correcting an underlying genetic mutation, the experimen...

Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma’s $3 billion strategic transaction with Roivant Sciences that gave rise to Sumitovant, represents an effort by the Japanese drug company to make the drug development process faster and more efficient. A critical piece of this effort is steps the company has taken to harness information technology to capitalize on existing knowledge to inform decision making. We spoke to B...

The ability to identify diseases at their earliest stages through the detection of minute levels of biomarkers offers the potential to make interventions before the outward physical manifestations of illnesses can bloom and long-term damage can occur. Quanterix is developing a platform of ultra-sensitive biomarker tests to give researchers greater insight into the transition from health to disease...

The marriage of synthetic biology to mRNA is creating the potential for a range of programmable therapeutics that can provide new ways of treating deadly and chronic diseases. Strand Therapeutics is creating a platform for developing these long-acting mRNA drugs that it says can be precise, multi-functional, and deliver potentially curative treatments with a single dose. We spoke to Jake Becraft,...

Cardiometabolic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, have long been treated with pharmacologic interventions. Better Therapeutics believes cognitive behavioral therapy delivered through its prescription digital therapeutics platform, will provide better outcomes at a lower cost. We spoke to David Perry, co-founder and executive chairman of Better Therapeutics, about the company’s...

The side effects of opioids and the potential for addiction underlies the need for new approaches to the treatment of pain. SiteOne therapeutics is developing a pipeline of therapies that target sodium ion channels to block the electric signals sent from the site of pain. Unlike other similar drugs, SiteOne is able to target these sodium channels with great specificity to avoid the types of side e...

Earlier this year NovelluxDx rebranded itself as Fore Biotherapeutics signaling a shift from being a diagnostics company to its new life as a precision cancer therapeutics drug developer. Building on its functional genomics platform, the company is in-licensing small molecule drug candidates it sees having potential to treat hyper-targeted patient populations. We spoke to Usama Malik, CEO of Fore...

When variants of the COVID-19 virus emerged in late 2020, it raised concerns about whether people already infected with the original virus, or vaccinated against it, would be able to generate a protective immune response that would confer protection against these new strains. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Johns Hopkins...

Hypoxia, a potentially fatal shortage of oxygen in tissues, is a complicating factor in a variety of serious illnesses including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory conditions. Diffusion Pharmaceuticals lead experimental candidate, TSC, enhances the ability of the body to deliver oxygen to where it is needed most. We spoke to Bob Cobuzzi, CEO of Diffusion Pharmaceuticals, about hypoxia...

Wet age-related macular degeneration is a progressive disease and a leading cause of vision loss in patients over the age of 60. Vision loss is caused by the leakage of blood and other fluid from abnormal blood vessel growth underneath and into the retina. Though the condition is treated by a class of therapies known as VEGF inhibitors, these biologics need to be repeatedly injected into patients’...

TNF inhibitors, such as Humira and Remicade, have been a great biotech success story. These multi-billion franchises treat a range of autoimmune conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and Crohn’s disease. Jim Woody, who led Centocor’s development team for Remicade, the first of the TNF-inhibitors, is today in pursuit of new uses for these therapies. Now CEO of 180 Life Sciences, Woo...

The plant world has been a ready source of bioactive compounds that can improve human health. There are more than 10 million natural compounds in the plant world, but less than 0.1 percent of these compounds have been explored. Brightseed’s Forager is an artificial intelligence discovery platform that is being used to map millions of bioactive natural compounds to identify ones with potential to a...

TFF Pharmaceuticals thin film freezing technology allows it to take vaccines, small molecule drugs, and biologics and turn them into a fine powder. The process not only can be used to eliminate the need for low temperature storage of certain medicines, but also improve the of water solubility of drugs and allow them to be delivered as inhaled therapies. We spoke to Glenn Mattes, president and CEO...

The gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 is being harnessed to alter DNA, but Locanabio is using it to create a new class of genetic medicines that can precisely target and modify dysfunctional RNA. The company says that its approach will allow it to produce in vivo medicines that combine the specificity of RNA-binding proteins with the effect of a one-time gene therapy. We spoke to Jim Burns, CEO...

In January 2020, antisense pioneer and Ionis Pharmaceuticals founder Stanley Crooke launched a nonprofit to design and deliver custom RNA-targeted therapies free of charge for individual patients with ultra-rare diseases. The organization, n-Lorem Foundation, leverages Ionis’ technology platform to speed the discovery and development of custom antisense oligonucleotides. More than a year later, th...

Octave Bioscience is seeking to transform the way neurodegenerative diseases are managed by providing new insights into the severity of a patient’s condition, its progression, and using evidence-based insights to improve outcomes. The company, which recently raised $32 million, is completing development of its care management platform for neurodegenerative disease. We spoke to Bill Hagstrom, CEO o...

Phosplatin Therapeutics is developing a class of small molecule cancer therapies designed to avoid the problems of drug resistance and toxicity associated with chemotherapies. The company’s lead experimental therapy is a first-in-class small molecule that promotes immunogenic cell death, a type of cell death that elicits an immune response. We spoke to Matthew Price, co-founder, executive vice pre...

Earlier this year Paige, a company developing artificial-intelligence driven pathology platforms for the diagnosis of cancer, raised $100 million in a series C venture round. The funding came a month after the company, a spin-out of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, scored its first two European approvals for its breast cancer and prostate cancer offerings. We spoke to Leo Grady, CEO of Paig...

While cell and gene therapies represent an area of great therapeutic promise, current manufacturing process are expensive and difficult to scale. As a result, this creates bottlenecks that limit patient access to these therapies and hamper the growth of the sector. Ori Biotech has developed an automated and scalable manufacturing platform for cell and gene therapies that seeks to increase capacity...

There’s been a growing industry effort to explore the use of psychedelics for their medicinal benefits. While much of these efforts have looked to these drugs to treat a range of psychiatric conditions, Eleusis sees a broader potential for them. While the company is pursuing psychedelics as potential treatments for major depressive disorder, it also is developing psychedelic candidate in other ind...

Regulatory T cell therapies have been pursued as treatment for cancers, but Sonoma Biotherapeutics believes these cells can be harnessed to delivery lasting and potential curative treatments for autoimmune and degenerative diseases. We spoke to Jeff Bluestone, CEO of Sonoma, about regulatory T cell therapies, why they may have broad application in a range of conditions, and what challenges will ne...

For more than 15 years, Longhorn Vaccines & Diagnostics has been designing and developing products for potential pandemics in developing economies. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, though, put the scalability of the company’s technology to the test as it landed big contracts in the United States for COVID-19 testing. We spoke to Jeff Fischer, president of Longhorn, about the benefits of the company’s...