Ralph Brandenberger,
Ph.D., to senior vice president, technical operations. Brandenberger joined the Nkarta team in 2018 and oversees the company s cell therapy manufacturing operations.
> Asklepios Biopharmaceutical tapped
Tracy Dowling as general counsel starting Jan. 25. Dowling will help manage and advise on corporate governance, business development transactions, license agreements, employment law and more. Most recently, Dowling served as associate general counsel at Spark Therapeutics.
> Precision oncology specialist OncoDNA signed on
Bernard Courtieu as CEO. Courtieu previously joined IntegraGen as CEO in 2007.
Eduardo Bravo,
OncoDNA s interim CEO since July 2020, will remain a consultant to the company s board.
> Abingdon Health named
Melanie Ross as chief financial officer, effective immediately. Ross will also serve on the company s board. Most recently, she was group finance director at GVO-B1; prior to that, Ross was chief financial office
Jan 29, 2021 7:00am AAVCOVID vaccine candidates from Mass General Brigham elicited immune responses to COVID-19 in mouse models of aging and obesity as well as in nonhuman primates. (Pixabay)
Among the logistical challenges facing public health agencies that are struggling to vaccinate the masses against COVID-19 is that the two mRNA shots on the market, from Moderna and Pfizer, need to be stored at ultra-cold temperatures. Now, an alternative technology for shielding patients from the novel coronavirus one that doesn’t pose that storage challenge is showing early promise.
Two vaccine candidates built from gene-therapy technology and developed by Mass General Brigham scientists elicited strong immune responses in mouse and nonhuman primate models, the researchers reported on the journal preprint site bioRxiv. The team received a grant of up to $2.1 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further develop the vaccine technology, called AAVCOVID.
(Medigene)
German biotech Medigene saw its shares drag down 7% into the red Thursday after it decided to cull one of its T-cell receptor modified (TCR-T) cancer assets after delays by COVID-19 restrictions hampered its efforts.
The therapy, MDG1021, which targets the antigen HA-1, works as a TCR-T immunotherapy and was being tested in patients suffering from relapsed or persistent blood cancers after allogeneic (non-self) hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, an area with high unmet medical need.
It was originally licensed from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in the Netherlands at the end of 2018. But now the company, which is looking to focus on solid tumors, said the development program of the therapy “is to be discontinued.”
Jan 28, 2021 10:10am Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that the gene editing tool TALEN is up to five times more efficient than CRISPR-Cas9 in parts of the genome called heterochromatin. (LionFive/Pixabay)
CRISPR-Cas9 has made waves in the biomedical world as a revolutionary gene editing tool, even garnering a 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry. But it has its limitations.
A research team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) showed that another gene editing technique called TALEN is up to five times more efficient than CRISPR-Cas9 in a highly compact form of DNA called heterochromatin, according to results published in Nature Communications.
Jan 27, 2021 9:50am Neurophth is developing its most advanced program, NR082, for an inherited form of vision loss called Leber hereditary optic neuropathy. (LionFive / Pixabay)
Qiutang Li, Ph.D. (Neurophth)
Wuhan Neurophth Biotechnology signed a new chief scientific officer as it moves its gene therapy pipeline toward the clinic. Qiutang Li, Ph.D., joins from the University of Louisville School of Medicine, where she was a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences for more than 14 years.
Neurophth is working on gene therapies for eye diseases delivered by adeno-associated viruses. As the company’s top scientist, Li will be responsible for global R&D and strategy for its IND portfolio.