A view on

Capsule Manufacturing: It’s Not Only What’s Inside That Counts The recent EU ban on Titanium Dioxide and changing customer habits are shaking up capsule production. Over the past few years, the coloring and manufacturing of pill capsules have undergone significant changes due to new EU regulations and customer demand for natural ingredients. And while originally invented to mask and protect the co...

Antibody-drug Conjugates: Next-Generation of Targeted Cancer Treatments Iwan Bertholjotti and Laurence Bonnafoux from Lonza give an insider look at how these promising treatments make it from development to commercialization. Chemotherapy is the first-line treatment for most types of cancer. However, one of the major challenges with this approach is that it targets both cancer and healthy cells, w...

Putting Manufacturing First: Codiak Moves Swiftly into Clinical Trials with Exosome-based Treatments  Sriram Sathyanarayanan, Codiak’s CSO, and Linda Bain, their CFO, share how the company moved into clinical trials in under 6 years.   Exosomes, extremely small vesicles shed by all cell types, promise to become a viable delivery system for treatments of many diseases. But until recently, manufactu...

In this reposted episode from December 2020, we're exploring how a better understanding of exosomes is leading to new treatments and diagnostic technologies with Uwe Gottschalk.  According to Uwe, the exosome revolution is already in full march. As researchers begin to identify how these cell-generated, nano-sized delivery drones function in the human body, novel drug delivery prospects are emergi...

De-risking Drug Development: Early Testing for Toxicity Saves Time and Resources   Yvette Stallwood, head of Lonza’s Early Development Services, talks about patient safety and other advantages of early testing for immunogenicity in the drug development pipeline.   In the high-stakes drug discovery game, from IND filings all the way up through the clinical trial phase, regulatory authorities are no...

Host and Health: Tailoring Personalized Medicine Using The Unique Microbiome Fingerprint  Professor Eran Elinav from the Weizmann Institute of Science discusses how the interaction between the microbiome and its host is transforming personalized medicine.   “I believe that in the next five to ten years, exploiting the potential of the microbiome will be central to personalized and precision medici...

Bridging Business and Biotechnology: Kodiak Sciences Is Increasing Treatment Efficacy for Retinal Diseases Victor Perlroth, MD, the Chairman and CEO of Kodiak Sciences, discusses how the company’s ABC platform medicines are designed to treat the leading causes of blindness.   Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the leading causes of blindness in adults worldwide. This disease deterior...

Safe Jabs Thanks to Horseshoe Crabs: Making Sure Your Injection is Free of Endotoxins Allen Burgenson, Lonza’s expert for all things testing, speaks to us about the dangers of endotoxin contamination and the future of non-animal testing for it.   “Before testing for endotoxins in the 1940s, a physician literally had to gauge the risk to your life because of something called injection fever,” expla...

A Welcome Virus: Cracking the Viral Code for the Battle Against Cancer Chairman and founder of PsiVac, Prof. Ghassan Alusi, and the chief operating officer, Imad Mardini, discuss how the company’s proprietary oncolytic virus platform offers new hope for cancer patients. During a time when everyone actively fears viruses (especially THE virus) and their mutations, it is only cancer cells that have...

It’s the season finale for A View On, the Lonza podcast. Over the past 12 months of our initial run, we have brought you a series of conversations exploring the new pharma and biotechnology trends. We spoke to Lonza and the industry experts and discussed exciting topics, such as exosomes, stem cells, drug product testing, bioprinting, and much more. In the latest episode, the podcast host, Lonza’s...

Devouring Bacteria: How Phage Therapy Is Shaping Antibacterial Treatments of the Future In this episode we speak with the CEO of BiomX, Jonathan Solomon, about producing and using phages to test and treat various diseases and conditions. Until very recently, treating a condition such as acne with an army of microscopic bacteria-destroyers known as phages—bacterial viruses that target and kill spec...

Delivering Personalized Therapies: Streamlining the Supply Chain for a New Generation of Treatments In this episode, we speak with Amy DuRoss, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vineti, about the challenges facing "just-in-time" manufacturing and delivery of personalized therapies—and the solutions her digital startup provides.   According to Amy DuRoss, the COVID-19 vaccine distribution ha...

Exosomes Know Where To Go: Using the Body's Own Cell-to-Cell Communication Network for Diagnostics and Drug Delivery We speak with Uwe Gottschalk, the Chief Scientific Officer of Lonza, about how a better understanding of exosomes is leading to new treatments and diagnostic technologies.   According to Uwe Gottschalk, the exosome revolution is already in full march. As researchers begin to identif...

Bugs as Drugs: Harnessing the Therapeutic Potential of the Microbiome Lukas Schüpbach, the CEO of Bacthera, and Gemma Henderson, Bacthera’s Head of Project and Portfolio Management, speak to Lonza about creating pharmaceuticals from the human microbiome.   The human microbiome, comprised of trillions of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and archaea, is unique to each individual and develops over the cours...

Since the arrival of Crispr in 2009, gene editing has made its way into labs. Its groundbreaking importance was acknowledged through the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Expanding gene editing for medical treatments, Cellectis focuses its 20 years of experience on developing cancer immunotherapies. Curious to Know More? Cellectis CEO André Choulika explains the technology of allogenic gene editing t...

In 2016 Lonza established its Drug Product Services (DPS) to realize this supply chain model for its partners and clients. Since then the DPS has grown to a workforce of over 250 experienced experts focused on safety, efficacy and quality. To ensure that Lonza’s pharmaceuticals perform as expected in real-world situations, the DPS team simulates the entire administration process until certain the...

Cannabinoids are emerging as a treatment option for autoimmune and other immune-related diseases thanks to their modifications as synthetic derivatives. Emerald Health Pharmaceuticals has widened the potential application of cannabinoids by designing cannabidiol and cannabigerol derivatives that have a greater effect on the endocannabinoid system and can interact with receptors and pathways from o...

Mesoblast CEO Dr. Silviu Itescu speaks to Lonza about the company’s advanced portfolio of anti-inflammatory allogeneic cellular medicines including remestemcel-L, which is currently being evaluated in a U.S. Phase 3 randomized controlled trial for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the principal cause of mortality due to COVID-19 infection.

One of the limitations of cancer therapy is off-target activity, which often has devastating effects on patients’ life quality. A novel strategy pursued by Cybrexa Therapeutics uses treatments specifically targeting solid tumors by taking advantage of one of their universal biomarkers – acidity. By using cell-penetrating peptides bearing an anticancer cargo load, their platform brings the treatmen...

Scientists have been printing cells for decades, but with the arrival of 3D bioprinters, getting printed tissue models to behave like living tissue has proved elusive. That is why angiogenesis and vascularization are two holy grails of 3D bioprinting. Allevi is not stopping at Earth-bound breakthroughs. The US company has also secured funding for simultaneous bioprinting experiments on the Interna...