[Source: http://ec.europa.eu/health/ageing/innovation/index_en.htm] Identifier: AGRI-SIMPLE-2018Pillar: AGRIP-1-1Opening Date: Deadline: Thu, 12 Apr 2018 17:00:00 (Brussels local time)Modification Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2018Latest information: 146 proposals were submitted in response to the 2018 call for proposals for simple programmes for the promotion of agricultural products.
Less than a month after the FDA refused to review Alkermes’ new drug application for the company’s depression drug, the agency has changed its mind, according to a statement from the company. After it “clarified certain aspects of the NDA submission”, Alkermes said Monday that the FDA will now accept the application without requiring additional data or analyses.
It’s quite an about-face. According to the company, FDA officials said in a March 30 letter that Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS) had provided insufficient evidence of overall effectiveness of the drug, ALKS 5461, and that they required more clinical trials and an… Read more »
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Last year Jerry Feitelson was accepted into BIO’s Start-up Stadium at the annual BIO International Convention. Armed with his six-minute pitch, the CEO and Co-founder of Agribody Technologies, Inc. (ATI) stood before the assembled judges and explained how his technology might one day help to save the planet. ATI was one of a select group of companies approved to participate in the program which was started in 2015 to provide early stage companies the opportunity to engage key members of the investment community, venture philanthropy groups and BIO attendees. The 40 finalists were chosen based on potential for commercial viability and the technology they were developing.
Dr. Jerry Feitelson, CEO and Co-founder, Agribody Technologies
Feitelson’s ATI was an impressive applicant. Becoming fully operational in July 2016, the company has a patented “gene switch” genome editing technology with wide application for agriculture including higher yielding crops with tolerance to drought, low nutrients and disease, as well as extended shelf life of perishable produce. As Feitelson notes:
“One of the fundamental problems farmers need to confront is feeding the increasing population. Conventional breeding in many crops is flattening out; even transgenic applications are reaching their limit in many crops. Some crops have not had yield improvement for 20 or 30 years. We are focusing on yield but also the problem of lost crops after and during harvest due to disease and stress. It is only going to get worse with global climate change.”
ATI alfalfa field trials showed 20-45% higher yield than the non-transgenic controls with no loss of quality
The company claims that the gene switch technology can increase yields by up to 20% and enhance crop tolerance to stress. With food-sourcing problems caused by an ever-growing population, decreased farmland availability and climate change issues, ATI’s focus on mitigating these challenges was a big draw to the Start-up Stadium.
One of the judges listening to Feitelson’ pitch was John Lilly of Lateral Capital, LLC, an early stage investment fund which looks for compelling new companies like Agribody Technology. According to Lilly:
“Early Stage companies can be a very risky asset class-unless you can find great entrepreneurs like Jerry. And everybody in the economy knows that innovation comes from the bottom up. The Start-Up Stadium gives these new companies a chance to be heard in front of experienced investors who have capital to invest in their terrific new ideas.”
The Lateral Capital strategy is to find early stage companies with a finished product, their first customer, strong patents to protect them while they grow “and the ability to save the world…just a little bit.” Lilly saw in ATI’s technology, the potential for a world with less waste due to food spoilage and better returns for farmers. With significant partnerships already in place, ATI’s commercial viability was a reasonable expectation.
After ATI’s presentation at the Start-up Stadium, Lilly provided some immediate feedback to Feitelson. Over the next nine months, he regularly stayed in touch with ATI, making frequent introductions to other stakeholders and offering advice.
John Lilly, Managing Member, Lateral Capital, LLC
In March of this year Lateral Capital invested in ATI!
The journey from idea to breakthrough innovation is long and expensive, requiring infusions of money along the way. Yet early stage biotechs often don’t have the right access to investors and other stakeholders. That’s where BIO’s “Start-Up Stadium” comes in, connecting early stage companies with investors and state and regional affiliates.
Through this competition, BIO is looking to provide resources that boost the biotechnology industry as well as provide a clear, successful example to stakeholders that early-stage innovation is well represented at the world’s largest biotechnology event.
Each finalist presents a five to seven-minute pitch, followed up with written and oral feedback from the judges. Who knows what’s in store for these presenters? Maybe they will make lasting partnerships like ATI and Lateral Capital.
Find out more about the Start-up stadium here.
Microbial therapies developer Commense has appointed Edward “Tad” Stewart to serve as the Boston company’s president and CEO. Stewart was most recently chief business officer of Cambridge, MA-based Crescendo Biologics. Before that, he spent 15 years at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: MACK) as senior vice president, business development. Commense emerged from Boston startup creator PureTech in 2016 to develop “therapeutic cocktails” of microbes intended to inoculate children against disease.
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Cellect Biotechnology (NASDAQ:APOP) was upgraded by Zacks Investment Research from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note issued to investors on Tuesday, March 20th. The brokerage currently has a $8.00 price objective on the stock. Zacks Investment Research’s target price suggests …
Kelly Martin has been named permanent CEO of Novan (NASDAQ: NOVN). The Morrisville, NC-based drug developer appointed Martin interim CEO last June, part of a corporate shakeup in which the company laid off 20 percent of its staff and shifted founding CEO Nathan Stasko to chief scientific officer. Those moves followed the failure of SB204, a topical gel developed to treat acne, in one of two Phase 3 studies in early 2017.
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[Source: Research & Innovation] AFLoNext, a five-year collaborative project involving 40 entities from 15 countries, aimed at proving and maturing highly promising flow control technologies for novel aircraft configurations.
In occasion of ILA Berlin 2018, project partners are organising a final conference whose aim is to offer a forum to present final results to a wider public.
This two-day event will bring together international delegates from industrial, research and academic institutions.
Day 1: Thursday 26th April from 14:00 to 18:00
Day 2: Friday 27th April from 9:00 to 13:00
Travel information: https://www.ila-berlin.de/en/travel
Entry tickets: buy a ‘day ticket congress & trade fair’
For any question about this event, please contact Dominika Behrendt, L-UP (dominika.behrendt AT l-up.com)
Looking forward to welcoming you!
Genetic engineering has long been a favorite topic for Hollywood screenwriters to exploit to make box office hits. From Jurassic Park to Deep Blue Sea, film writers recognize that science fiction, or genetic engineering fiction, sells. There’s even a channel dedicated to science fiction, in which the science of biotechnology frequently makes a cameo.
In the eyes of screenwriters, CRISPR offers another opportunity. And “Rampage”, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, appears to be Hollywood’s first attempt at misconstruing gene editing technology to entertain film lovers. In short, the film focuses on gene edited animals – instead of lions, tigers and bears, think gorillas, crocodiles and wolves – that have been altered to be huge, deadly and downright mean.
Megan Theikling and Andrew Joseph from STAT News were lucky enough to catch an advanced screening of the film and sat down to discuss what the film’s directors got right and wrong about CRISPR. For argument’s sake, the reporters entertain some of the genetic changes that are paramount to the movie, however, they note that many of the mutations in the film aren’t really based on science. As Andrew explains:
“The idea is that the biotech company “weaponized” CRISPR research and introduced the genes of a bunch of other animals into our three monster-animals to give them traits such as those bat wings, or the spikes of some other animal, or the strength or regenerative abilities of certain kinds of bugs. This is all explained very quickly in some exposition by our disgraced yet heroic geneticist played by Naomie Harris. “I’m talking about extremely specific results,” says Naomie.
“One question I have is whether these animal features are polygenic as opposed to tied to one gene. That would make it a lot harder to introduce them into another species… Whether it [CRISPR] could be used to double the size of a gorilla overnight, well, that might be a different story…”
“The CRISPR’d animals of “Rampage” also become super aggressive, and behavior might be harder to change through editing. Maybe they just ramped up testosterone production somehow? I don’t know, Naomie didn’t explain that part.”
As Megan notes, the changes that can be made though gene editing aren’t the only things the film’s writers took creatively liberties with. She begs the question: Where are the regulators?
“All of the CRISPR work in this movie seemed to be WILDLY unregulated. There’s no FDA cameo here. There’s no Scott Gottlieb in skinny jeans.”
“In real life, there’s a whole system that keeps research in the U.S. involving CRISPR in check. The Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health regulate CRISPR as it relates to medical research, of course. But the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture also play a role in overseeing uses of CRISPR. And the Department of Defense – which is interested in genome-editing as a potential bioterrorism threat – has poured a lot of money into CRISPR research. So there are a lot of people overseeing this kind of work.”
And as Megan goes on to mention, the film’s producers relied more on fiction than on science when developing their plot:
“And as much as I absolutely loved this movie – I will be seeing it at least four more times in theaters, thanks MoviePass – I do think it played fast and loose with some of the science around CRISPR, which is a real thing that actually exists. I know it’s science fiction, but the closest thing I could find on the crew list to a science adviser was a “genetics lab tech advisor.”
Even “The Rock” himself weighed in on the movie’s use of CRISPR as a scientific background, making light of the fact that he doesn’t always remember what the acronym means:
Great RAMPAGE review from my fellow Science majors. We wanted to utilize real CRISPR technology as our scientific backdrop. Of course I still screw up what this acronym means.
Louis Renzetti has been appointed chief scientific officer of New York-based Bridge Medicines. Renzetti most recently worked as chief research and early development officer of Gotham Therapeutics, another New York biotech startup. Before that, he was senior vice president of drug discovery and early development for Waltham, MA-based X-Rx. His experience also includes early drug discovery work at Roche. Bridge launched in 2016, aiming to develop drug candidates that come from academic institutions.
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In 2014, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation committed to fund a first-of-its-kind study of asthma and air quality in Louisville, KY, in part because the organization wanted to see whether patient-generated data could influence public policy.
The study, which was also funded by the America Lung Association and several local foundations, involved providing hundreds of asthmatic Louisville residents with high-tech sensors for inhalers that track where and when they take their medications.
The results of the study, some of which were published earlier this month in a paper in the medical journal Health Affairs, represent a “strong example of the… Read more »
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