The UK publicly-funded Medical Research Council has announced the setting up of a new centre in London that will produce ‘drug-like’ molecules with the potential to become therapies. The centre will have an initial operating budget of £6 million.
Galápagos NV has announced the start of a first-in-man study of a candidate rheumatoid arthritis treatment which targets a protein kinase previously not associated with RA. The target is MAPKAPK5.
A spin-out from University College London (UCL) has obtained finance from GlaxoSmithKline to develop what may be the first product ever to combine a small molecule drug with an antibody in order to treat disease.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be issuing new guidelines on how scientists should conduct research using embryonic stem cells following President Barack Obama’s decision to lift restrictions on federal funding of this research.
Researchers from the UK and Canada have reported a method for reprogramming human skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells without the use of viral vectors.
The Dutch public-private partnership, Top Institute Pharma (TI Pharma), is helping fund a project aimed at developing a vaccine for Chikungunya, an insect-borne virus that can cause disability. There is currently no vaccine available for the disease. The project has a budget of €2.3 million which will be jointly funded by TI Pharma and members of the research consortia.
The privately-owned Belgian biotechnology company, Algonomics, has signed an agreement with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) to investigate a new approach to improve the immunogenicity of candidate AIDS vaccines.
Privately-owned Cellzome Inc is to receive a grant of up to €3.85 million from the German government. Spread over five years, the grant will enable Cellzome’s Heidelberg unit to expand its proteomics platform for the discovery and development of new drugs.
Paolo Macchiarini, head of thoracic surgery at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, Spain and colleagues have reported the results of a trachea transplant into a woman with tuberculosis using tissue from a donor which was repopulated with stem and epithelial cells from the recipient. This is understood to be the first ever trachea transplant and the first ever tissue transplant to be performed without the use of immunosuppressive drugs.
A long-standing collaboration among Cellartis AB, the Hagedorn Research Institute of Novo Nordisk, and Professor Henrik Semb of Lund University into diabetes has been upgraded with a view to developing a new cell therapy for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.