A small dose

BUILD-TO-RENT OPERATOR LAUNCHES SECTORFIRST PRESCRIPTION SERVICE WITH NATIONAL PHARMACY CHAIN

Moda Living, the UK’s developer and operator of rental communities, announced a partnership with VideoGP by LloydsPharmacy, via the launch of a ‘Health Concierge Service’ enabling residents to book free virtual GP appointments and have prescriptions delivered directly to their door.

The ‘Health Concierge Service’ is being rolled out free of charge to all Moda Living residents living at Angel Gardens in Manchester, The Lexington in Liverpool, The Mercian in Birmingham, New York Square in Leeds, and The McEwan in Edinburgh, plus future residents in Moda’s pipeline of more than 20,000 homes across the UK.

In as little as 30 minutes, residents will be able to claim a usage code for the VideoGP service via their MyModa app, and speak to a GP on their mobile devices any time from 8am-8pm, wherever they are. Prescriptions can be delivered to the residents the next day, or collected the same day at their nearest LloydsPharmacy of choice, at no additional cost.

The partnership is the latest announcement in a wellbeing strategy to create the healthiest and happiest communities in the UK, all included in a Moda Living residents’ rent.

Speaking on the Health Concierge Service launch, Oscar Brooks, director at Moda Living, said: “Building strong communities is at the centre of the Moda Living brand, and we’re continuously looking for new ways to help support the health and wellbeing of our residents. We are proud to be pioneering this new service with LloydsPharmacy for our residents across the UK, and hope the launch of the Health Concierge Service with VideoGP for free virtual GP appointments and on-demand prescriptions helps take the pressure off residents who may need these services the most.”

SiSaf and University of Leipzig develop BioCourier targeted miRNA for pancreatic cancer

RNA delivery and therapeutics company, SiSaf, announced its collaboration with the University of Leipzig, Germany, to develop Bio-Courier targeted micro interfering RNAs (miRNA) for the treatment of cancer, with an initial focus on pancreatic cancer.

The collaboration will combine SiSaf’s expertise in RNA delivery using its Bio-Courier silicon-stabilised hybrid lipid nanoparticles (sshLNPs) and the University of Leipzig’s expertise in miRNA targeting and therapeutic approaches in cancer, led by Professor Achim Aigner.

SiSaf will develop miRNA Bio-Courier formulations that will be tested in pancreatic cancer models. Under the terms of the agreement, SiSaf has an exclusive option to acquire a worldwide license to a patent by the university.

A major bottleneck in miRNA replacement is their

AION Labs, an innovation lab spearheading the adoption of AI technologies and computational science to solve therapeutic challenges, announced the formation of DenovAI, the lab’s second startup approved by the Israel Innovation Authority. The new company will develop an AI-powered biophysics solution that can discover potential antibodies completely de novo (from scratch), and then suggest candidates likely to make effective drugs.

DenovAI aims to build a next-generation computational platform for the de novo design of strongly binding antibodies directed towards epitopes of choice. In addition to funding, support and mentorship, AION Labs and its pharma partners will provide DenovAI with pharmaceutical data for model training and advanced machine learning development. Therapeutic antibodies are wellestablished life-saving drugs. Discovery of existing therapeutic antibodies relies on immunisation or invitro selection from large, pre-defined libraries with limited sequence space coverage. Selecting a drug candidate from billions of potential antibody sequences is laborious, expensive and, in many cases, fails to identify functional antibodies.

DenovAI aims to build on recent advances in protein structure prediction, AI algorithms, computational molecular biophysics techniques and increased availability of experimentally determined antigenantibody structures to create a new paradigm for AI-driven antibody discovery.

“We are developing an end-to-end AI framework that can predict antibody sequences and structures that bind with high affinity and selectivity to any given epitope. And with efficient delivery. The aim of the collaboration is to develop a replacement therapy combining both miR506-3p and miR24-3p for a more powerful effect, using SiSaf’s Bio-Courier drug delivery platform that leverages the unique properties of elemental silicon to optimise lipid nanoparticle technology for RNA therapeutics. unlimited coverage of sequence space. This has never been done before,” said Dr. Kashif Sadiq, founder and CEO of DenovAI.

“Pancreatic cancer is an area of high unmet need, and we are encouraged by Professor Aigner’s research and the potential to develop miRNA-based replacement therapies to improve outcomes for patients,” said Dr. SaffieSiebert.

DenovAI is the second startup to be formed by AION Labs, which creates early-stage startup teams that harness the power of artificial intelligence to transform the process of drug discovery and development for the betterment of human health. The new company has been created through the investment of leading pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Teva and with close support from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and additional financial backing from the Israel Innovation Authority and the Israel Biotech Fund.

Applied Nanolayers and SoundCell awarded grant to develop graphene-based antibiotic sensitivity test

SoundCell BV have received €275,000 R&D funding from Provincie Zuid-Holland to develop a prototype for SoundCell’s high throughput single-cell graphene antibiotic sensitivity test.

The announcement follows research undertaken at TU Delft and published in Nature Nanotechnology last year where ultrathin bilayer graphene was used to detect nanoscale forces – at least 1000 times smaller than a mosquito bite – generated by single bacteria.

By tracking the changes in the bacteria’s nanomotion when different types of antibiotics are administered, the team were able to demonstrate that graphene drums can effectively perform antibiotic susceptibility testing with single-cell sensitivity.

This breakthrough in measuring antibiotic efficacy has major implications for public health worldwide. The technology has the potential to enable very fast antibiotic testing in healthcare settings, giving physicians a much more effective diagnostic toolkit for fast detection of antibiotic resistance in clinical practice, leading to more effective treatment, and acting as an invaluable tool in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

The 18-month project will optimise the antibiotic sensitivity platform, bringing it closer to market. Enhancing the throughput of the platform, developing faster read-out schemes, and validating it against a variety of pathogenic samples, the funding will accelerate development of a clinical-grade graphenebased antibiotic screening device that is manufacturable in high volumes.

Conversations around the fourth industrial revolution, commonly known as “smart factory” or “industry 4.0,” have been sweeping the globe, and manufacturing processes powered by artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), robotics, internet of things (IoT), and the metaverse are now a reality for the pharma industry.

In 2022, a large pharmaceutical company announced a new smart manufacturing site in the UK, and multiple pharmaceutical companies already leverage IoT devices to ensure that medication is transported and stored under safe ambient conditions.

WHAT PHARMA CAN EXPECT FROM INDUSTRY 4.0

The fourth industrial revolution focuses on connecting all business details through digitalisation using cloud or on-prem solutions. In a smart factory, all functions and processes are connected, providing transparency across teams and processes,

Amin Sikander, Synkrato co-founder & president, examines the trends within pharmaceutical manufacturing that will incur as the processes become smarter, more data-driven and transparent.