Healthcare industry

Affimed will receive $96 million upfront and committed funding and is eligible for up to an additional $5.0 billion including milestone payments, and royalties on sales.

Article - 21/08/2018

Parkinson's disease: vitamin B3 has a positive effect on nerve cells

Parkinson's disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases in the world. There are around 4.1 million sufferers worldwide. It is characterised by motor impairments that result from the death of certain nerve cells in the brain. Researchers at the University of Tübingen have now discovered that vitamin B3 has a positive effect on damaged nerve cells and can boost their energy metabolism.

Expert interview - 08/08/2018

Ludolph: diagnosing and treating neurodegenerative disorders

Ulm has long been a world leader in diagnosing and treating rare neurological disorders, notably amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Huntington's disease (HD). We spoke with Professor Albert C. Ludolph, spokesperson for the Ulm DZNE site, medical director of the Clinic for Neurology at the RKU (University and Rehabilitation Clinics of Ulm) and world-renowned ALS researcher.

Company profile - 31/07/2018

Acousia Therapeutics: medicines for deafness

Deafness is one of the most common sensory disorders in the world: in Germany alone, around eleven million people suffer from hearing loss. So far there is no real therapy, the symptoms can only be alleviated to a greater or lesser degree. This is what researchers from the Tübingen-based company Acousia Therapeutics want to change: they have identified drug candidates that can protect sensory hair cells and support their function.

Company profile - 26/07/2018

evid - therapy recommendations at a glance

There are over 700 treatment guidelines in Germany alone, and each is up to several hundred pages long. Can doctors still stay on top of things? A start-up company from Mannheim called evid is developing a software that can retrieve relevant therapy recommendations for individual patients from the huge pile of paperwork. In March 2018, the founding trio won first place of the eHealthForum Freiburg start-up competition.

Press release - 04/07/2018

Phase-I-trial approved for novel stem cell therapy for patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy

Viscofan BioEngineering, the biomedical business unit of the world market leader for collagenous sausage casings Viscofan announced today that the Spanish Agency for Medicines (AEMPS) has given green light to carry out a clinical phase-I-trial with Viscofan BioEngineering’s first product for regenerative medicine. The novel therapy consisting of stem cells on a collagenous carrier membrane can now be tested on ten patients suffering from severe…

Expert interview - 26/06/2018

Genome analyses: "Germany lags behind dramatically"

Around 6,000 genetic diseases can be diagnosed using genetic tests. Genetic testing enables the accurate identification of diseases especially when symptoms are unclear, and also allows statements to be made about disease progression. However, restrictive regulations considerably hinder the use of genetic diagnostics. BIOPRO spoke with Dr. Dr. Saskia Biskup, a human genetics specialist and co-founder of the Tübingen-based company CeGaT.

Article - 06/06/2018

Robots for assisting with care and treatment in nursing homes and hospitals

Robotic systems have great potential in the healthcare sector. For example, intelligent care aids, such as robotic technologies, extended care trolleys and lifters make life easier for nursing home and hospital staff. Mobile robots that assist with transport tasks or guiding people can help patients become more independent.

Article - 29/05/2018

ITAS – Assessing the impact of life science technologies

The Karlsruhe Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) is one of the largest and most renowned institutions in Germany involved in evaluating scientific and technological developments. The institute assesses the impacts and possible effects of new methods from a wide range of scientific fields - including the life sciences.

Article - 23/05/2018

Bacteriophages as alternatives to antibiotics

Multidrug-resistant bacteria are resistant to many existing antibiotics and can be difficult to treat. There are increasing numbers of them worldwide. Although novel antibiotics are being developed, there are far too few of them to tackle the rise of multidrug-resistant bacteria. In Eastern Europe, doctors have been treating bacterial infections with viruses that infect bacteria, so-called bacteriophages, for almost 100 years.

Article - 19/04/2018

New combination therapy for treating stroke patients

30 to 40 percent of all stroke patients suffer from persistent signs of paralysis that prevents them from using the affected hand. The innovative combination of two non-invasive treatment methods is a therapeutic approach with considerable potential for treating severely impaired patients.

Article - 05/04/2018

Crossing the valley of death with translational cancer research

It can take many decades before promising research results become therapies that have a positive effect on cancer patients. Most research projects go adrift somewhere between the laboratory and the bedside in the so-called "valley of death". Projects carried out at the DKFZ show that translational cancer research actually works.

Press release - 03/04/2018

Double success for Heidelberg stem cell researchers

Two awards at once, both carrying high monetary prizes, go to young researchers from the Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Research and Experimental Medicine (HI-STEM) at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ): Simon Raffel will receive the 2018 Walter Schulz Prize. Simon Haas will share the 2018 Otto Schmeil Prize with his colleague Lars Velten from EMBL.

Article - 28/03/2018

New method for analysing epigenetic modifications - in the service of medical progress

It is not just genetic factors that influence developmental processes and diseases; it is becoming increasingly evident that epigenetic changes play a major role too. Thanks to a new method developed at the University of Stuttgart, epigenetic processes can now be investigated in living cells.

Big Data - 26/03/2018

Eliciting reliable information from big data with classifiers and multimodal data fusion

Prof. Hans A. Kestler knows a great deal about large amounts of data. He heads up the Institute of Medical Systems Biology at the University of Ulm and is constantly inundated with cooperation enquiries from clinicians. On behalf of BIOPRO, Walter Pytlik asked him whether the conditions for using big data more in biomedical research are already largely present.

Article - 19/03/2018

Regenerative medicine: curing rather than simply treating diseases

Some scientists refer to the latest developments in the field of regenerative medicine as the "next revolution in medicine". With the help of gene therapies or stem cells, regenerative medicine aims not only to treat disease symptoms, but to cure them at source. Some approaches are already being used to treat patients and several others are close to application.

Big Data - 13/03/2018

“More data does not automatically imply more knowledge“

In Germany, one of the big names in evidence-based medicine is Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Gerd Antes, co-director of Cochrane Germany. In the following interview, Antes talks about the hype surrounding big data, warns against false promises and reminds us about what is taken for granted.

Dossier - 06/03/2018

Big data - the big promise of the new digitised world

Big data is a widely used buzzword in today's information era. The use of big data in the digital world presents both an opportunity and a risk. Mass data is now used and analysed in almost all areas of life. Even the healthcare sector is undergoing extensive digitisation.

Article - 21/02/2018

HepaRegeniX – a start-up is taking it up a step!

HepaRegeniX, a biotech company founded in 2016, specialises in developing drugs that restore the regenerative capacity of diseased livers. The three founders of the biotech start-up, Prof. Dr. Lars Zender, Prof. Dr. Stefan Laufer and Dr. Wolfgang Albrecht, anticipate starting clinical testing of the first drug candidate in 2019.

Article - 20/02/2018

New strategies against malaria

Malaria, which is a mosquito-borne disease caused by Plasmodium parasites, is still one of the worst infectious human diseases. The parasites have developed resistance against previously effective drugs and new strategies to combat malaria are urgently needed.

Article - 14/02/2018

Animal-free diabetes research with the pancreas chip

Quite a number of promising drug candidates for the treatment of diabetes are currently in the pharmaceutical pipeline, including innovative drugs that can stimulate the regeneration of insulin-producing pancreatic cells. However, they will have to be safety tested in animals. Scientists from Ulm University Hospital have now begun to develop a pancreatic chip from stem cells.

Article - 18/01/2018

Medications that target metastasing tumours

Tumour metastases are often resistant to the drug that is used to eliminate the primary tumour. Genome-wide analyses of mutation patterns in the primary tumour and its metastases provide information on the aggressiveness of cancer and may help to find the best available means of further treatment. This has been demonstrated by scientists from Heidelberg in a clinical trial on the molecular evolution of renal cancer.

CureVac AG, a leading clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of pioneering mRNA therapeutics, and Arcturus Therapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ:ARCT), an RNA medicines company, today announced they have entered into a broad strategic collaboration to jointly discover, develop and commercialize novel messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics.

Big Data - 14/12/2017

Looking at the whole genome raises new questions

Research laboratories around the world have long focused on studying the whole human genome. It is hoped that knowing the whole human genome will improve diagnostics and enable more specific therapies. Although genome analysis has not yet reached routine clinical application, whole genome sequencing has already raised many ethical and legal issues - for researchers, physicians and patients.