Striv­ing for high­er res imag­ing of cells, Har­vard team de­buts start­up with back­ing from ARCH, North­pond

As sci­en­tists race to find new ways to look in­to what’s go­ing on in­side cells, ARCH Ven­ture Part­ners and North­pond Ven­tures are in­ject­ing $14 mil­lion in­to a Har­vard team promis­ing to vi­su­al­ize ac­tiv­i­ty on a “sub­cel­lu­lar lev­el” — down to every RNA.

Xi­aowei Zhuang

Xi­aowei Zhuang and David Walt are two of the promi­nent sci­en­tists be­hind Viz­gen. Zhuang, a Howard Hugh­es Med­ical In­sti­tute In­ves­ti­ga­tor and Har­vard pro­fes­sor, was the in­ven­tor of an­oth­er pop­u­lar su­per-res­o­lu­tion mi­croscopy method while David Walt was a sci­en­tif­ic founder of the se­quenc­ing gi­ant Il­lu­mi­na.

Viz­gen was found­ed on MER­FISH, or mul­ti­plexed er­ror-ro­bust flu­o­res­cence in situ hy­bridiza­tion, which was in­vent­ed by Jef­frey Mof­fitt while he was a post­doc at Zhuang’s lab. MER­FISH is, in turn, built on FISH — a tech­nol­o­gy that’s been used for decades to de­tect DNA or RNA tar­gets by send­ing flu­o­res­cent probes to bind to them.

David Walt

The new imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy lever­ages new er­ror de­tec­tion and cor­rec­tion tech­niques, in­clud­ing bar­cod­ing schemes and com­bi­na­to­r­i­al la­bel­ing and imag­ing, to achieve high­er ac­cu­ra­cy and save time.

As a re­sult, it al­lows sci­en­tists to in­ves­ti­gate many more RNA species, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny.

“Giv­en its abil­i­ty to quan­ti­fy RNAs across a wide range of abun­dances with­out am­pli­fi­ca­tion bias while pre­serv­ing na­tive con­text, we en­vi­sion that MER­FISH will en­able many ap­pli­ca­tions of in situ tran­scrip­tom­ic analy­ses of in­di­vid­ual cells in cul­ture or com­plex tis­sues,” Zhuang and Mof­fitt wrote with col­lab­o­ra­tors in a pa­per in­tro­duc­ing the tech in 2015.

Walt fur­ther ex­plained why that’s use­ful in an in­ter­view with Xcon­o­my:

Every im­age that’s tak­en as a con­se­quence of the way that this process is done is done with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 nanome­ters of res­o­lu­tion, so you can zoom out all the way to the whole tis­sue and see where the gene ex­pres­sion is oc­cur­ring, then you can zoom in to a sin­gle cell and look at the sub­cel­lu­lar ex­pres­sion of every one of those RNAs that are present in the sam­ple.

Jef­frey Mof­fitt

That can tell re­searchers a lot about cell type, state, or­ga­ni­za­tion, in­ter­ac­tions as well as func­tion with­in the tis­sue.

“The deep in­for­ma­tion un­locked by MER­FISH ex­pos­es bi­ol­o­gy at the net­work lev­el, dri­ving in­sights that will help us build the fu­ture of hu­man health,” Kei­th Cran­dell, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at ARCH, said in a state­ment.

GSK’s vac­cine group in Eu­rope — in­clud­ing R&D — faces heavy job cuts in lat­est re­struc­tur­ing

Emma Walmsley

GSK’s top executives stayed mum yesterday on the location and number of layoffs likely to occur as the pharma giant integrated their vaccine R&D ops with the pharma side of the business. But it’s clear now that the ax will fall hard on the European vaccine group, with 935 jobs on the chopping block in Belgium and many more rumored cuts under discussion.

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Hal Barron at Endpoints News' UKBIO 2019

UP­DAT­ED: Glax­o­SmithK­line's lat­est makeover in­cludes auc­tion­ing off der­ma­tol­ogy, adding new tech and lay­offs. But how many?

GSK execs announced Wednesday morning that they are setting up a 2-year program to prepare the company for its split in two — consumer healthcare and the R&D-focused outfit she and research chief Hal Barron promised to revamp and reenergize 2 years ago.

A key part of that effort is a new R&D reorganization in which the vaccines group — traditionally separate inside the global organization — will integrate its work with the pharma teams in order to orchestrate common research themes on both sides. And GSK is helping pay for the 2-year program with a plan to sell off non-core assets, starting with its dermatology drugs portfolio.

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Jeffrey Bluestone — UCSF via Parker

Jef­frey Blue­stone ex­its Park­er and switch­es fo­cus back to au­toim­mune dis­eases in cell ther­a­py 2.0 launch

Jeffrey Bluestone is returning to the scientific field where he forged his reputation as a drug hunter and top investigator.

The prominent scientist has handed in his walking papers as CEO of the high profile Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, switched to the adjunct faculty at UCSF and is now launching a new company, where he plans to take a hands-on role in the development of new cell therapies for autoimmune and degenerative diseases.

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Michel Vounatsos (Biogen via YouTube)

UP­DAT­ED: Bio­gen shares rock­et up as My­lan's chal­lenge to Tec­fidera patents is slapped down

Biogen $BIIB just won one of the biggest fights it’s ever faced.

The big biotech beat Mylan’s challenge on the patents that guard their cash cow, Tecfidera, the multiple sclerosis drug that drove the company’s comeback under George Scangos and sustains his successor Michel Vounatsos as they search for new drugs.

In the inter partes review ruling, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board — or PTAB — determined:
Having considered all the evidence, petitioner has not demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence the unpatentability of claims 1-20 of the ‘514 patent.
The news, a closely watched catalyst that had analysts on high alert, immediately triggered a huge 29% spike in their share price. Tecfidera earned $3.3 billion in 2019, almost half its revenue for the year.

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Par­ty on: Base edit­ing start­up, com­pu­ta­tion­al drug dis­cov­ery ex­perts and CRO bag close to $2B to­tal on their way to Nas­daq

On the back of Black Diamond Therapeutics’ roaring public debut, the IPO momentum is pushing three biotech players from very different corners of the industry to shiny listings on the Nasdaq.

Gene editing startup Beam Therapeutics, computational drug discovery specialist Schrödinger and contract research organization PPD have collectively bagged close to $2 billion by pricing at the top of or above the range laid out in their terms.
CRISPR trailblazers raise $180M for the next big thing in gene editing

Olivier Morand (Azafaros)

Dutch biotech scores €25M in small mol­e­cule bet to tack­le lyso­so­mal stor­age dis­or­ders

While a host of biotech companies work on gene and enzyme replacement therapies for certain lysosomal storage disorders, a Dutch player is aiming to slot in its small molecule approach across a range of these rare inherited metabolic disorders.

The company — Azafaros — founded in 2018 based on science developed from Leiden University and Amsterdam University Medical Center has secured €25 million in Series A financing as it works on shepherding its lead experimental drug into the clinic.

Sanofi's R&D group spot­lights a big win for BT­Ki mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis drug. But plen­ty of ques­tions re­main

One of Sanofi’s top mid-stage drug prospects — the subject of a recent short attack — is being flagged through to a battery of pivotal Phase III trials after investigators concluded that the drug passed the primary endpoint with flying colors. And that will likely be heralded as a particularly big win by the biotech they licensed it from.

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Ken Frazier, AP Images

UP­DAT­ED: It's not just about Keytru­da, Mer­ck in­sists, as it carves out as­sets worth $6.5B in­to new com­pa­ny

As sales of Merck’s flagship therapy Keytruda grow from strength to strength — the New Jersey drugmaker is spinning off its women’s health, legacy brands, and biosimilar drugs into a new company.

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UP­DAT­ED: Yes, Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day is ready to ink some deals. No, you won’t see him sweat it

A bevy of analysts turned out for Gilead’s Q4 call Tuesday night looking for some of the old sizzle about the future that used to excite them in the past. What they got was a lecture on steady improvement, sound judgment and proper dealmaking — along with a plateful of slightly disappointing numbers that left more than a few feeling a bit deflated by the end.

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