A few years ago, when Ana Moreno was doing her PhD work at the San Diego lab of one of the early CRISPR gene editing researchers, she came across a paper that made national headlines a decade prior.

Researchers in the UK followed up on stories of a Pakistani boy who could walk on coals and pass knives through his arms and determined that rare mutations in one gene, called Nav1.7, made him and several relatives unable to feel pain. The finding, the New York Times reported, raises “hopes of developing novel drugs that would abolish pain by blocking the gene’s function.”

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 109,800+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

A little over two years since first teaming up on protein degradation, Deerfield and Dana-Farber are putting their heads — and their wallets — together again.

The pair is forming a new partnership in the form of Riverway Discoveries, a translational research engine aiming to boost efforts at getting preclinical cancer work into human studies. Deerfield is putting up $130 million over the next 10 years to advance such endeavors, after funding the protein degradation effort for $80 million in late 2018.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 109,800+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

Jonathan Weissman’s team watched the cancer cells spread across the doomed mouse. Engineered with a bioluminescent enzyme, they appeared in scans first as a small navy blue diamond lodged near the heart; a week later, as a triangle splayed across the mouse’s upper body, with streaks of green and two distinct bright red hubs of activity. By day 54, the mouse resembled a lava lamp.

The images would have been familiar to any cancer biologist, but they didn’t actually tell you much about what was going on: why the cancer was metastasizing or which cells were responsible. For that, Weissman’s team had designed a new tool. Inside the original navy blue diamond, they had engineered the microbiological equivalent of an airplane’s black box — a “molecular recorder” that, after the mouse’s death, could allow them to extract the cells and wind back intimate footage of a single cancer’s ascent.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 109,800+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

Under science chief Dan Skovronsky, Eli Lilly has taken some big swings at next-gen therapies, including trying to find the next big thing in oncology. Now, after one early failure in the field, Lilly is going back to the bispecific antibody well with a new deal with a Dutch biotech.

Lilly will pay $40 million upfront with an additional $20 million equity stake in Merus NV to identify and develop three bispecific antibodies looking to engage the CD3 antigen on T cells and redirect immune cells, the Indianapolis pharma giant said Tuesday.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 109,800+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN