
Mayo Clinic launches clinical analytics platform with nference; WuXi buys German plant from Bayer
→ Mayo Clinic is opening up its sprawling clinical database to nference, the Cambridge, MA-based AI startup it’s long partnered with and recently backed in a $60 million round. The project aims to digitize 25 million tissue slides within the next 2 to 2.5 years, FierceBiotech reported, in addition to annotating, linking and tagging written physician notes. After sorting through the data, nference will use the platform to identify new targets and biomarkers as well as apply it in clinical trial recruitment and real-world evidence generation.
→ Cyprium Therapeutics, one of the startups incubated by Fortress Biotech, has been granted rare pediatric disease designation by the FDA for copper histidinate, also referred to as CUTX-101, for the treatment of Menkes disease. The drug — which is designed to boost blood and brain copper levels — has also gained orphan and fast track status.
→ In an expansion of its global footprint, WuXi Biologics has acquired a drug product manufacturing plant from Bayer. The facility, located in Leverkusen, Germany, will also serve as a back-up production site for Bayer’s Kovaltry, a hemophilia A treatment, once WuXi takes over.
→ South Korea’s Celltrion has plans to build a new plant in China to manufacture its biosimilars as it advances a Remicade copycat in the country. Chairman Jung-jin Seo said at the JP Morgan conference that the facility will have a production capacity of 120,000 liters, according to Yonhap News Agency.
→ Novartis, J&J, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and GSK are joining the Gates Foundation on a philanthropic community-based primary healthcare initiative in six African countries led by two charities. The drugmakers will “contribute disease-specific expertise and experience in the discovery and development of new tools, which will supplement the community health worker models.” They would also each contribute $1.5 million to the project.