This week’s biotechnology news headlines include, Gates Foundation grant for low cost polio vaccine, Sanofi and Amgen close to getting support for cholesterol medicines in UK by offering discounts, CRISPR drug maker Intellia raises $108 million, Medicare Part B prescription pilot program, Daiichi buys Japanese rights to UK heart stem Cell Therapy, Federal microbiome project moving forward, and Intarcia moves toward diabetes treatment approval.

Cell Culture Events

Webinars:

Bioprocess Insights Webinar Series:

Unlocking the Potential for Efficiency in Downstream Bioprocesses

Wed, May 18, 2016 – Time:11:00 AM EDT – Duration:30 minutes

Madhu Raghunathan will walk you through several innovative strategies for achieving increased efficiency in buffer handling, chromatography unit operations, and downstream processing in general.
Register Now.

Single-Use Technology and Sustainability: Quantifying the Environmental Impact

Wed, June 1, 2016 – Time:11:00 AM EDT – Duration:30 minutes

Bill Flanagan will talk about sustainability and how this relates to single-use technologies in biomanufacturing operations. He will present new data on the implications of a single-use strategy from a sustainability perspective.
Register Now.

Conferences:

May

World Cord Blood Conference – May 18-19, 2016 – London, UK

http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/world-cord-blood-congress-europe/index.stm

World Precision Medicine – May 18-19, 2016 – London, UK

http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/world-precision-medicine-congress/index.stm

ISCT – May 25-28, 2016 – Singapore

http://www.celltherapysociety.org/?page=ISCT2016

Cell Culture World Congress USA – May 19-20, 2016 – Hilton San Diego Resort and Spa – San Diego, CA

http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/cell-culture-world-congress-usa/index.stm

June

BIO International Convention – June 6-9, 2016 – San Francisco, CA

http://convention.bio.org/

Cell Line Development & Engineering – June 13-15, 2016 – Parc 55 Wyndham San Francisco, CA

http://www.ibclifesciences.com/CellLine/overview.xml

Co-located with

Bioconjugates: From Targets to Therapeutics – http://www.ibclifesciences.com/Bioconjugates/overview.xml

Next Generation Protein Therapeutics Summit – http://www.ibclifesciences.com/ProteinSummit/overview.xml

Annual Meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research – June 22-25, 2016, San Francisco, CA

http://www.isscr.org/home/annual-meeting/san-francisco-2016

Progress in Continuous Biomanufacturing – June 27-28, 2016 – Robinson College, Cambridge, UK

The conference is enhanced by the participation of several leading industrial technologists, scientific, vendors and also leading academics from Europe and USA. They have come forward to share their experience and knowledge to provide a better understanding of the current technologies and their application in continuous biomanufacturing. There is also a plenary lecture by a distinguished professor in the field of bioprocessing, and you will also benefit from access to unpublished data. This meeting will address several advancements and their successful application with data in the Technology both Upstream and downstream and also on Initiatives to process developments and project to the future direction of the industry. By joining with us you can benefit from the current state of-the-art advancements in continuous manufacturing and also learn about the successful organisations that are developing and applying these methods in-house.

http://www.subramanian.org.uk/

Viral Safety and Raw Materials – June 2016, Vienna, Austria

http://www.informa-ls.com/event/empoweredantibodies15

Headlines

“Gates Foundation to Grant $38 Million for Low-Cost Polio Vaccine,” Fortune

“Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceuticals is to get $38 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a crucial, low-cost polio vaccine for use in developing countries.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Generating Recombinant Versions of Human Serum-Derived Proteins – Transferrin and Albumin”

“Sanofi, Amgen Set to Get U.K. Access for Drugs With Discount,” Bloomberg

“Sanofi and Amgen Inc. came a step closer to winning support for the use of their new cholesterol medicines within the U.K.’s public health-care system by offering discounts on the treatments for some patients who are at very high risk of heart attacks and strokes.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Poster: Purpose-designed Protein A resins for Improved Downstream Process and Cost Efficiency in MAb purification”

“CRISPR Drug Maker Intellia Therapeutics Sells $108M In IPO Shares,” Xconomy

“The latest biopharmaceutical company testing Wall Street’s belief in the promise of gene modification has gone public. Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NTLA) of Cambridge, MA, which owns rights to an important but disputed piece of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, sold 6 million shares at $18 each this evening to raise $108 million. Its stock will trade on the Nasdaq starting tomorrow under the ticker “NTLA.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “The CRISPR/Cas9 System and its Applications”

“What the Medicare Part B prescription pilot doesn’t address,” The Washington Post

“The May 2 editorial “Drug money,” which endorsed the Obama administration’s proposed Medicare Part B pilot program, did a serious disservice to the patients whose health would be jeopardized by this misguided experiment.

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “2015 FDA New Drug Approvals – 13 Biologics Receive Approval”

“Daiichi buys Japanese rights to UK heart stem Cell Therapy,” Reuters

“A Welsh stem cell company founded by a Nobel prize winner has signed a partnership deal with Daiichi Sankyo, giving the drugmaker rights to develop its regenerative heart treatment for the Japanese market.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Cool Tool – Producing 3D Tissue Models of the Airway Epithelium with PneumaCult™”

“Federal Microbiome Project Aims to Solve Tiny Riddles of Science,” The New York Times

“The Obama administration on Friday will announce the latest in its scientific “moonshots,” this one in the red-hot field of microbiomes — the trillions of micro-organisms in places like soil and the human gut.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Cool Tools – BrainPhys™: A New Way to Culture Neurons”

“East Bay site plays key role as diabetes drug developer aims at FDA approval,” San Francisco Business Journal

“Intarcia Therapeutics Inc.’s big push toward a diabetes treatment approval will mean more work for the company’s Hayward manufacturing site. The company, which moved its headquarters from Hayward to Boston in 2012, reported positive results of the last and biggest of four late-stage trials of its drug-and-device combination to treat type 2 diabetes. That clears the way for the company to submit an application for Food and Drug Administration approval in the fall.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Enabling High Density Cell Banking using a Single-Use, Closed-System”