Euro Biotechnology

Historical data available in the report elaborates on the development of the White Biotechnology on national, regional and international levels.

Three San Diego life science startups have been selected to go through the Ad Astra Ventures accelerator program, a relatively new addition to the San Diego scene.

Ad Astra, which means “to the stars” in Latin, was founded this year by three local entrepreneurs and investors interested in bolstering the efforts of women-led companies. Earlier this year it graduated its first cohort, which consisted of three companies in the consumer product and software sectors. Its second program, which gets underway this month, was tailored for life science companies.

The program says its primary differentiator from other startup programs in town-such as… Read more »

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Natalie Sacks will resign from her position as chief medical officer of Aduro Biotech (NASDAQ: ADRO) effective Oct. 1, the cancer immunotherapy developer announced Wednesday. Berkeley, CA-based Aduro gave no reason for the resignation, but said that Sacks will continue to advise the company through a consulting agreement. Sacks joined Aduro in 2016. Last year, the company wound down work on the drug CRS-207 after disappointing results in mesothelioma, ovarian, and gastric cancer studies. The company has since turned its focus to three other early-stage programs for a number of cancers.

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[Source: http://ec.europa.eu/health/ageing/innovation/index_en.htm] Identifier: H2020-BG-2018-2020Pillar: Societal ChallengesOpening Date: Deadline: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 17:00:00 (Brussels local time)Modification Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2018Latest information: The submission of proposals to the 2 topics of H2020-BG-2018-2 Second Stage closed on 11 September 2018. A total of 8 proposals were submitted. The number of proposals per topic is as follows:
• BG-08-2018-2019 (Scope B) (RIA) : 4
• BG-08-2018-2019 (Scope C) (RIA) : 1
• LC-BG-03-2018 (RIA) : 3
Evaluation results are expected to be communicated to the applicants in December 2018

Nearly twelve years ago, members of the biopharmaceutical supply chain, including BIO, came together in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and partnered with the American Red Cross to form a coalition. The coalition was founded to resolve the coordination challenges witnessed during the Katrina response. This coalition was founded under the name Rx Response and is now Healthcare Ready.

Healthcare Ready is a national nonprofit that leverages unique relationships with government, nonprofit and medical supply chains to deliver on its mission of enhancing the resiliency of communities before, during and after disasters.

The motivating reason for our creation, and our continued existence today, is a recognition of the importance of seamlessly integrating private sector organizations into all parts of healthcare preparedness and response. When over 90% of critical healthcare infrastructure – from manufacturing and distribution facilities to pharmacies, dialysis centers, and other points of care – is owned and operated by the private sector, this kind of integration is needed, yet it remains a significant challenge.[1]

The last eighteen months have underscored this notion, reminding us that weather events continue to pose real threats to public health and patients. From impacting the production of drugs and medical products to widespread damage of facilities causing patients to become disconnected from care, we continue to see natural disasters stress and fracture healthcare operations in countless ways. For example, during the Hurricane Harvey response, we coordinated with partners to make helicopter deliveries of medical supplies to Texas hospitals because flood waters created impassable roads. In Florida after Hurricane Irma, we worked to ensure patients dependent on oxygen tanks who couldn’t leave shelters until they knew their next destination – whether it was home or another care facility – had a resupply of oxygen. Due to flooding and the impacts of high water on power and transportation, these resupplies were challenge. In Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, every facet of healthcare preparedness and emergency management was strained during the 2017 hurricane season. The challenges of responding to patient needs on an island manifested in myriad ways. For the first time, we worked with Federal partners to support a mass evacuation of dialysis patients by helping to secure wrapround services for over 200 evacuated dialysis patients and their caregivers.

In our role as healthcare emergency managers, we worked between the private and public sectors to help the helpers. Our team focused on connecting private sector resources to public (sector) needs throughout all three major storms. In each activation, we spent countless hours on the phone and on email connecting first responders and medical volunteers with donated services and supplies, including medicines, hygiene kits, over-the-counter supplies, and behavioral health services.  Supporting first responders and those on the ground during a disaster is an important aspect of what we do, which would be impossible without the support from partners like BIO.

While there have been trying times, important progress and innovation in the field has been made. Preparedness is a moving target, but in public health and healthcare preparedness, we must keep pace with this target. We can stay closer to the target through public-private partnerships and the integration of private sector goodwill and resources into preparedness plans and initiatives. Healthcare Ready is one example of this, as is our signature resource, Rx Open. Rx Open is a one-of-kind map that displays open pharmacies in areas across the US impacted by a disaster, made possible by a collaboration between pharmacies, the National Council of Prescription Drug Programs, and Healthcare Ready.

Partnerships across the public and private sectors were life-saving during the last hurricane season. We were proud to help forge and participate in several of these, such as collaborating with ride-sharing apps to provide rides for patients at no cost and amplifying awareness of expanded prescription assistance programs. We were eager and grateful to amplify others partnerships, such as expanded telemedicine offers and millions of dollars’ worth of donations and in-kind support. Partnerships like these help enable us to act as an “invisible hand” to minimize gaps in response and recovery operations and avoid potential disruptions in care of those affected.

We are proud and grateful to count BIO as one of our longest-standing partners and supporters. Through their support and that of other private sector partners, Healthcare Ready has been able to act on our mission of building and enhancing resiliency before, during, and after disasters by creating partnerships with government, nonprofit, and medical supply chains. During blue skies and during emergencies, our partners play a critical role in ensuring we can continue to meet the needs of those impacted, even long after the storm hits.

We rely on relationships to be able to coordinate effectively during events. Between disasters, we spend our time improving based on lessons learned, and establishing new partnerships. All of this work is sustained by continued contributions from donors, partners, and members. This support is critical to ensure that our operations are in place and strong before the next disaster. There are many ways to partner with us: learn more about becoming a member, sign up for our notifications and situation reports during events, or contact us at ContactUs@HealthcareReady.org. If we can be helpful during an event, email us at alerts@HealthcareReady.org or call 866-247-2694.

[1] Progress Coordinating Government and Private Sector Efforts Varies by Sectors’ Characteristics, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-39

Dr. Nicolette A. Louissaint is the Executive Director of Healthcare Ready. Prior to this position, Nicolette served as the organization’s Director of Programming. Before joining Healthcare Ready Nicolette served as a Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. During the height of the Ebola Epidemic of 2014, Nicolette served as the Senior Advisor to the State Department’s Special Coordinator for Ebola.

San Diego’s Biocom industry group announced Monday the latest development in its steady northward expansion.

Biocom, which promotes and lobbies on behalf of life science companies, said it has opened a new office in the San Francisco Bay Area and formed an advisory board of local executives.

The association, which represents more than 1,000 companies and organizations in the industry, primarily in California, said it has 275 members in the Bay Area, a total that it said is “steadily increasing.” The new office is in the Genesis Tower in South San Francisco.

The members of the advisory board are J&J Innovation… Read more »

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NorthStar Medical Technologies, which is seeking to become the first U.S. company in decades to domestically produce a widely used medical radioisotope, said it has appointed Stephen Merrick as CEO. Merrick joined Beloit, WI-based NorthStar in 2016 as the company’s chief operating officer and was later given the title of president, which he’ll continue to hold, NorthStar said.

NorthStar founder George Messina previously served as the company’s CEO and chaired its board of directors. Messina will now be chairman emeritus, NorthStar said. He was also appointed president and CEO of NorthStar Nuclear Therapies, a wholly owned subsidiary trying to develop… Read more »

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Historically, federal dollars inadvertently flowed to medical research with a disproportionate focus on men’s health. There are several reasons for this. Decades ago, many scientists concluded men were easier to study because they weren’t subject to frequent hormonal changes that could complicate a study’s design or the interpretation of its results. Also, safety concerns for pregnant women once resulted in broad exclusions of women with “child-bearing potential” from many clinical studies.

The last quarter-century has brought a greater focus on the opportunity cost of uneven representation in clinical studies. When it comes to gender, in particular, we now know unequivocally that a person’s sex can influence disease presentation, diagnosis, severity and treatment.

For example, certain chemotherapy drugs have more side effects on women than men. Women may need lower dosages of certain medications due to differences in body weight compared to men. Research suggests that women may be 20 to 70 percent more likely to develop lung cancer than men who smoke the same number of cigarettes. Meanwhile, colon cancers are frequently misdiagnosed because the disease can present differently in women than men.

In 1993, Congress passed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act – a federal rethinking of the participation levels of women and minorities in clinical research. The legislation was a much-needed breakthrough, but not a cure.

Today, the NIH review process treats inclusion of women and minority subjects as an indicator of a proposal’s scientific merit, and NIH staff tracks these metrics for consideration in making grant awards. Additionally, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made significant strides in diversifying clinical trials conducted in the United States. The FDA launched an Office of Women’s Health Research focused on advancing the science of women’s health as well as an Office of Minority Health charged with increasing clinical trial data available on racial and ethnic minorities.

These federal efforts have helped the biopharmaceutical industry achieve substantial progress in diversifying trials, yet gaps persist. An FDA study published in July 2017 found that women represent 43 percent of trial subjects globally (and 49 percent in the United States) despite the fact that women make up more than half of the population. A cardiology study published this April, for example, found women to be under-represented in clinical trials for new medicines to treat artery disease, acute coronary syndrome and heart failure.

One way we can close the gender gap in clinical research is by promoting greater collaboration between drug developers and researchers who specialize in women’s health. Last month, I sat down with Nicole Oshurak, director of corporate partnerships at the Magee-Women’s Research Institute and Foundation (MWRI) – a Pittsburgh-based organization whose mission is to “change the world’s thinking on women’s health.”

With $40 million in NIH grants last year, MWRI is the country’s largest research institute devoted exclusively to women’s health research. Its researchers are making discoveries in reproductive biology, breast cancer genomics, fertility, and HIV immunization and prevention.

MWRI investigators conduct research studies with major institutions, universities and medical centers around the world. Now, the group is exploring industry partnerships beyond NIH funding with the hope of getting breakthroughs to more patients. This June in Boston, the institute participated in its first BIO International Convention, and Oshurak told me she was flooded with requests for business meetings by potential industry partners.

The growing appetite of drug developers to partner with women’s health researchers is a real trend – and, I believe, a harbinger of further strides to come. Companies interested in exploring women’s health collaborations should consider attending the Magee-Women’s Research Summit Oct. 9-10 in Pittsburgh, where MWRI will award the $1 million Magee Prize – the world’s largest for a scientific collaboration to advance women’s health.

One of MWRI’s most enduring contributions to medical research is its maintenance of the world’s largest maternal infant database containing information from more than 200,000 births spanning two decades. That project is part of its 9-90 research, which focuses on how human life in the womb for the first nine months can predict and change the course of a person’s health over the next 90 years.

Women may be 51 percent of the world’s population, but they carry to term 100 percent of our collective future. Patients of every age, gender and background stand to benefit significantly from medical research better calibrated to reflect this reality.

Greenwood, who represented Pennsylvania’s 8^th district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2005, is CEO of BIO, the world’s largest trade association representing the biotechnology industry.

[Source: Research & Innovation] The Beyond Lithium-Ion Workshop – From Current Research to Industrial Application is a unique high-level event organized by Leitat and Varta Microbatteries bringing together international speakers to show the evolution of post lithium-ion technologies.
It will take place on October 2nd, 2018 at Nice Acropolis, France. This event will be dedicated to the exchange of knowledge from current running European collaborative projects and industrial development dedicated to post lithium for stationary or electrical mobility.
It is organised in the framework of ALISE and ALION Horizon 2020 founded projects developing post-lithium batteries.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee unanimously reported the bipartisan SUCCESS Act. Co-sponsored by Representatives Adams, Chabot, Comstock, Goodlatte, Handel, Jeffries, Johnson, Nadler, Velazquez and Wagner, the bill brings together important legislative efforts long supported by BIO.

First, it directs the establishment of a joint study by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and Small Business Administration on ways to identify best practices for increasing patenting rates for women, minorities and veterans. Secondly, the bill extends the soon-to-expire authority for the PTO to adjust the fees it relies on for funding.

Women and persons of color apply for and hold far fewer patents than white men, which is contributing to an imbalance in entrepreneurial and startup success rates and missed opportunities for American innovation and competitiveness.

To directly address this disparity, BIO’s member companies, as part of our Workforce Development, Diversity, & Inclusion (WDDI) Initiatives, have set as a goal “as an industry, [to] achieve significant increase in racial diversity, increase LGBTQ representation and achieve 50 percent representation of women at functional leader and C-Suite by 2025, (gender diversity improving from ~25 percent currently).”

We believe these goals are achievable if we all work together. BIO is hopeful that the full House will take up and pass the SUCCESS Act soon and urges the Senate to do the same.