The Bio Report

Artificial intelligence is all the rage in drug discovery today, but there are efforts to apply to technology to other aspects of the drug development continuum to improve decision making and increase efficiency. One such example is Phesi, which has developed an artificial intelligence platform to improve clinical site selection, evaluate protocol designs and patient inclusion criteria, and manage...

Antibody-drug conjugates marry the precise targeting of an antibody to a cytotoxic payload. That has the potential to provide a powerful treatment approach to a variety of cancers with less toxicity than systemically delivered chemotherapy. The problem has been producing large quantities of antibody-drug conjugates in a consistent manner where all the pieces are where they belong. Sutro Biopharma...

While much of the focus of drug developers looking to act on the genetic mechanisms underlying diseases has focused on the genes that code for proteins, Syros Pharmaceuticals is looking to the regulatory regions of the genome. This is the noncoding part of the genome that controls the expression of genes, turning them on or off, or modulating their level of activity. We spoke to Eric Olson, chief...

Anixa Biosciences is harnessing the immune system to both diagnose and treat cancer. It recently announced a licensing agreement with the Cleveland clinic for a novel breast cancer vaccine that is being developed for both therapeutic and prophylactic use. It’s lead candidate is a CAR-T cell therapy in development for ovarian and other solid tumors. We spoke to Amit Kumar, president and CEO of Anix...

There’s growing interest in cannabinoids for their therapeutic potential in a range of conditions, but one challenge therapeutic developers face is a reliable and consistent supply. Teewinot Life Sciences is using synthetic biology to produce a range of cannabinoids. We spoke to Michael Luther, president and CEO of Teewinot Life Sciences, about the companies process for producing cannabinoids, its...

Much has been made about a cancer moonshot, but in the world of oncology, rocket fuel is rarely a topic of conversation except maybe as a metaphor. EpicentRx, though, is looking to rocket fuel as a source for its lead experimental therapy RRx-001. It believes this high-energy molecule, derived from rocket fuel, has the potential to improve immunotherapies and radiotherapies, as well as having anti...

The complexity of individual tumors creates a challenge for physicians to determine the optimal treatment for any given patient. This complexity may also require a combination of therapies to target the multiple pathways a given cancer may exploit to grow and spread. My Personalized Therapeutics is taking a model systems approach to pair patients to customized drug regimens by using fruit fly mode...

As biomedical data proliferates and the life sciences becomes more closely integrated with data science, the ability for researchers to access, use, and learn from the growing universe of information requires new tools. InveniAI is seeking to address this need with its artificial intelligence platform for biopharmaceutical companies to both monitor innovation and to enhance their own drug developm...

The convergence of information technology with the life sciences is opening up new ways of approaching the challenges of drug discovery and development. While much has been made about approaches that seek to leverage artificial intelligence, Nanome is bringing virtural reality into the process. With the company’s technology, scientists can take a fantastic journey to view and manipulate proteins,...

The high cost of developing therapies impedes the pharmaceutical industry’s ability to bring innovative products to market, but also leaves potentially valuable discoveries languishing on university shelves. The Swiss non-profit foundation Molecule is trying to alter the landscape by establishing an online marketplace to create shared ownership of intellectual property and provide a new funding me...

Mesenchymal stem cells may be a powerful way to treat a range of medical conditions but realizing the therapeutic potential of these cells has been hampered in part by the challenges of manufacturing a consistent product at scale. Cynata Therapeutics believes its platform technology addresses these challenges. The company lead cell therapy candidate is being developed to treat graft vs. host disea...

The placebo response in clinical trials can derail a promising experimental therapy that might benefit patients. In cases where trials rely on subjective endpoints or patient-reported outcomes, the placebo response can be more pronounced. Tools4patient has developed a means of identifying patients who are likely to be placebo responders and allow trial sponsors to take steps to account for that in...

Artificial intelligence is being embraced the pharmaceutical industry as a way to reduce the time and cost of drug development. BioXcel Therapeutics is using AI to leverage as a means to identify new targets for approved drugs and clinically-validated drug candidates with a focus on oncology and neurology. We spoke to Vimal Mehta, CEO and founder of BioXcel Therapeutics, about the company’s AI pla...

The ability to capture and parse data in real-time and at a vast scale is transforming our approach to biomedical research and has the potential to change the way we think about the causes of disease, public health, and medical interventions. Paul Glimcher, president and CEO of Datacubed Health and professor of Neural Science, Economics and Psychology, at New York University, where he directs the...

Cidara Therapeutics is developing new anti-infectives using its Cloudbreak platform to develop antiviral conjugates that both directly kill pathogens and also enlist a patient’s immune cells to attack and eliminate them. The company is advancing its first therapy developed through the platform to the clinic, CB-012, an experimental therapy that is being developed to both treat and prevent flu infe...

Roivant Sciences doesn’t fit easily into conceptions of drug companies, venture capital firms, or accelerators. It is building highly-focused drug development companies around promising undervalued assets it licenses. In five years’ time, it’s raised more than $3 billion, amassed a broad pipeline of more than 35 therapies, and has more than 800 employees. We spoke to Eric Venker, chief operating o...

Advances in precision medicine have helped to reshape the cancer landscape with the development of diagnostics to determine whether a patient may benefit from a specific drug. Little progress, though, has been made outside of the area of oncology to avoid the waste of time and money on therapies that won’t work for an individual patient. Scipher Medicine is working to change that for the treatment...

Concerns about the threat posed by the growth of drug-resistant pathogens has often focused on the need to reinvigorate our arsenal of antibiotics, but health authorities are paying new attention to the rise of invasive fungal infections. Globally, about 1.5 million people each year die from these infections. There’s been a lack of investment and innovation in new types of antifungals and the worr...

The effort to cost-effectively accelerate the development of new therapies has led to the rise of new business models that seek to provide expertise, capital, and access to professional networks that can help early-stage companies navigate pitfalls and overcome challenges. Xontogeny is a bit of a hybrid in its approach, preferring the term aggregator to accelerator or incubator. We spoke to Chris...

Agenus is an immuno-oncology company with a long history and a broad portfolio. To help fund its pipeline, it entered into a significant alliance with Gilead Sciences in December 2018 and has used an unusual funding mechanism by raising money through what it described as the first asset-backed digital-security offering. We spoke to John Castle, head of translational medicine and bioinformatics at...

The recent late-stage failure of another high-profile Alzheimer’s disease drug candidate is a reminder of the challenges of developing drugs for neurological diseases. These challenges are driven by the fact that there are hundreds of different brain cell types and complex circuits and pathways in the brain that make it difficult to identify the right protein to target to treat a given disease. Ce...

Intensity Therapeutics argues that cancer is both a micro and macro disease. Therapies need to act at the site of tumors, but they also need to treat the systemic effects of the disease that results from micro-metastases. Intensity is developing cancer therapies that are delivered directly into tumors, but also stimulate the innate immune system to address the more systemic effects of cancer. We s...

SQZ Biotech believes its platform technology can enable the engineering of virtually any function into any cell type allow for a new world of cell therapies to revolutionize the treatment of diseases. As its name implies, it does this by squeezing a cell to momentarily disrupt its membrane to allow it to insert a range of substances. We spoke to Armon Sharei, CEO of SQZ Biotech, about the company’...

As concerns grow about the rise of antibiotic resistant bugs, the ability to combat them is being undermined by the economics of antibiotic drug development. Many large pharmaceutical companies stepped away from the space and despite the passage of the GAIN Act in 2012 and government investment in antibiotic research and development, drug companies argue more action is needed. We spoke to Michael...

Neurotrope is developing its experimental therapy bryostatin as a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. The company believes the drug has multiple mechanisms of action and can stimulate synaptic growth factors to repair damaged synapses, form new ones, and prevent neuronal death. The company, though, found itself in a controversy over the way it charac...