News

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A Doudna for their discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 genetic scissors, a method of genome editing. It marks the first time ever that two female scientists have jointly won the award.

The pair sparked a revolution in genome editing with their work, and CRISPR-Cas9 technology is now used widely in basic science, biotechnology and the development of future therapeutics. The tool can be used to change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology has been awarded to a team of scientists who discovered the hepatitis C virus. Harvey J Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M Rice have made a “decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis,” according to the prize committee.

The virus is a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer. An estimated 71 million people have chronic hepatitis C virus infection, with almost 400,000 people dying from the disease in 2016, according to the World Health Organization.

Vaccibody AS, a clinical-stage Norwegian biotech, has entered an exclusive licensing deal with Genentech to develop and commercialise a DNA vaccine equipped with neoepitopes specific to a patient’s tumour. The vaccine, VB10.NEO, is designed to induce an immune response that is tailored to the tumours. It has already generated data in several cancers in a Phase 1/2a study.

The Swiss-US health technology company Sophia Genetics SA has raised $110 million in a Series F financing round to expand its artificial intelligence service which analyses medical data for use by healthcare professionals. The proceeds will enable the company to develop the platform and expand its operations in the US and Asia.

The Series F round was led by aMoon, a venture fund based in Israel, and Hitachi Ventures, the venture arm of Hitachi Group. Existing investors, including Swisscom Ventures and Endeavour Vision Ltd, also participated.

The European Medicines Agency has started a rolling review of a prospective vaccine for Covid-19 being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca Plc on the basis of preliminary data showing that it triggered the production of antibodies and T cells that target the virus. The agency announced the review on 1 October.

A new fund for medical diagnostics has secured €50 million in capital from leading European institutions, including the European Investment Fund (EIP), an agency of the EU. The fund, Kurma Diagnostics 2, is being launched by Kurma Partners, a venture capital company based in Paris, France. It is expected to invest in about 15 companies specialising in molecular and digital diagnostic technologies.

Galecto Inc has raised $64 million in equity financing to prepare for a potential conditional approval of its lead product for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in the EU and to further advance its clinical-stage products for liver fibrosis and myelofibrosis.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new indication for Nucala (mepolizumab) for hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES), a group of rare blood disorders characterised by the overproduction of eosinophils, a type of white blood cell. It is the first approval for this patient group in nearly 14 years.

Prescription drugs sold in Canada at cheaper prices than in the US will be eligible for importation under a new rule adopted by the US Food and Drug Administration on 25 September. The rule implements an executive order issued by the White House in July.

A case study of a 45-year old woman with severe Covid-19 has shown that administration of APN01, an experimental biologic, enabled the generation of neutralising antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and a rapid drop in virus load. The results of the study were reported online in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine on 24 September 2020.

APN01 is being developed by the Austrian company Apeiron Biologics AG and has been shown to be safe in Phase 1 studies of healthy volunteers. It is currently being investigated in Phase 2 trials in Austria, Germany, Denmark, the UK and Russia.