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Eco-friendly plug to treat Nosebleeds

12/27/2022

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Nosebleeds are one of the most frequent ENT emergencies worldwide. It is estimated that 60% of the world’s population will experience a nosebleed at least once in their lifetime, although only 6-10% will seek medical attention. There are several methods for treating a nosebleed, and one of the most popular ones with a high success rate is nasal packing. However, the choice of the most appropriate nasal plug is vital to the outcome of the treatment. The ideal nasal plug should promote hemostasis and be comfortable for the patient, thus reducing damage to the nasal passages.

Edorta Santos-Vizcaíno, a researcher in the NanoBioCel group and one of the authors of the work, pointed out the joint work by the UPV/EHU’s NanoBioCel and BIOMAT groups have shown that by-products from the food industry are a valuable, sustainable source of biomaterials that can be used to make safe, effective nasal plugs with excellent hemostatic properties.

“Using natural by-products of the food industry –soy protein and chitin– we developed a scaffold or spongy matrix that displays a series of very interesting physicochemical properties: it is capable of absorbing huge quantities of water or blood, it has a large surface area to bind and house cells inside it, it does not produce any kind of rejection against the material and, what is more, it partially degrades,” said the UPV/EHU researcher.

Chitin is the basis of this new structure, i.e., the skeleton of the spongy material. At the same time, the soy protein is responsible for lining the structure to make the material highly biocompatible and, in turn, able to absorb large amounts of blood. In short, “our material produced from food industry waste displayed superior mechanical and hemostatic properties compared with Merocel®,” concluded Edorta Santos. Research staff from both research groups agree that this work, carried out from a circular economy approach, demonstrates that a green strategy can be adopted to manufacture nasal plugs using upgraded by-products from the food industry; their hemostatic properties are even better than the gold standard in the clinical setting. Researchers are currently in the process of applying for a European patent and trying to find a company that is interested in the product with a view to bringing the idea to fruition and willing to commit itself to this technology based on the concept of the circular economy.

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Biggest M&A's of 2022 in BioPharma

12/20/2022

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Mergers and acquisitions were widely expected to be a key theme in the biopharmaceutical industry in 2022. Several big pharma companies were flush with cash leading into the year, thanks to their top-selling COVID-19 products, innovative branded medications, and high-value divestitures. Eleven mega-blockbuster medicines, defined as products generating sales greater than $5 billion per year, are set to lose global patent protection this decade.

Topping it off, clinical and early commercial-stage biopharma valuations dramatically fell during the last quarter of 2021—a trend that gained momentum during the first three quarters of 2022.

Amgen-Horizon

Amgen’s recent $27.8 billion acquisition of the rare disease specialist Horizon Therapeutics takes this year’s top spot as the industry’s priciest buyout. This upsized deal lands Amgen a well-rounded portfolio of high-margin rare disease drugs, including the thyroid eye disease treatment Tepezza.

Pfizer-Biohaven

Pfizer’s $11.6 billion buyout of Biohaven Pharma is the year’s second-largest M&A transaction in the industry. Through this mid-sized buyout, Pfizer gained the migraine drug Nurtec ODT, which is expected to play a vital role in the drugmaker’s battle against a slew of upcoming patent expires.

Pfizer-Global Blood Therapeutics

The year’s third priciest buyout is Pfizer’s $5.4 billion deal for the sickle cell disease specialist Global Blood Therapeutics. After winning a bidding war for Global Blood in August, Pfizer added the oral SCD drug Oxbryta to its diverse product portfolio. Oxybryta is forecasted to surpass $1 billion in annual sales at its peak. However, this revenue prediction will depend on the commercial uptake of developing rival gene-edited therapies.

BMS-Turning Point

Bristol Myers Squibb’s $4.1 billion buyout of Turning Point Therapeutics is the year’s fourth-largest buyout. This all-cash deal, announced last June, centered around the experimental lung cancer candidate, repotrectinib. If approved, Wall Street estimated that repotrectinib should generate peak sales of more than $1 billion annually. Repotrectinib, in turn, may play a vital role in the big pharma’s battle to minimize the impact of upcoming patent expires for the mega-blockbuster cancer therapy Opdivo and the blood thinner Eliquis (co-marketed with Pfizer).

Amgen-ChemoCentryx

Amgen’s $3.7 billion acquisition of the ChemoCentryx last August is this year’s fifth-largest deal. The impetus behind the transaction was ChemoCentryx’s FDA-approved anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis drug, Tavneos.

There have been 31 total buyouts in the pharmaceutical industry in 2022. For comparison, the sector notched 25 M&A deals in 2021, 23 in 2020, 28 in 2019, and 16 in 2018, according to Chimera Research Group. The industry has been busier than usual on the M&A front. However, the size of the deals in 2022 is also a noteworthy feature of this uptick in biopharma buyouts. For 2022, the average among the five largest deals presently stands at $10.5 billion. In 2021, the mean ‘upsized’ deal came in at $6.4 billion. By contrast, the industry’s appetite for high-dollar buyouts surged to $17.5 and $33.1 billion in 2020 and 2019, respectively. In 2018, pharma’s average large deal came in at $7.8 billion. In short, this year’s pharma M&A activity was characterized by a sizable uptick in the number of buyouts and a modest increase in the average deal size on the top end of the spectrum relative to 2021. Biopharma hasn’t shown much interest in returning to the type of mega-deals seen in either 2020 or 2019.

https://www.biospace.com/article/biopharma-s-5-biggest-m-and-a-deals-of-2022/?utm_campaign=Newsletter%20%7C%20BioPharm&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=237906013&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9Ph52hPP-R8mj

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New Heart Model Developed to Treat Heart Failure

12/14/2022

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Scientists from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin Ireland report the development of a new lab-based model of a heart and circulatory system. The goal is to help test devices to treat patients with one of the most common forms of heart failure.

There are two common types of heart failure: Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF) and Heart Failure with Reduced Ejection Fraction (HFrEF). Ejection fraction is the measurement used to determine the heart’s ability to pump oxygen-rich blood through the body.

In recent years, the number of patients presenting with heart failure with normal or preserved ejection fraction measurement has been increasing, most likely due to common risk factors, including old age, hypertension, and obesity. Women are at greater risk than men.

In the research from RCSI, a model called a “mock circulatory loop” was developed to mimic both a healthy heart and a heart in failure with preserved ejection fraction. The model can test devices to examine the left atrium (the top chamber responsible for receiving oxygen-rich blood from the lungs) and the left ventricle (the lower chamber responsible for pumping the oxygen-rich blood around the body), according to the researchers. The investigators said, “In this work, a novel mock circulatory loop (MCL) is presented that is capable of simulating both healthy cardiac function and HFpEF.

This MCL differs from others in the literature as it features two independently actuated heart chambers, representing the left atrium and the left ventricle. This is an important improvement over other designs as it allows for potential HFpEF treatments to be examined, not just in relation to their effect on the left ventricle but also on the left atrium.”

The development of this lab-based model is a milestone in heart failure research as it enables devices to be tested that have the potential to treat a condition that affects millions of people around the world, improving their quality of life and reducing the burden on health services. The research was funded by Enterprise Ireland, which supports the development of the RCSI pipeline spin-out company, Pumpinheart, which plans to commercialize a novel medical device to treat heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.

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PROTACs: A New Route to Vaccines

12/6/2022

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Influenza has been overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it remains a major threat to global health. Deploying innovative technologies to improve vaccines will be a welcome addition to the options for controlling influenza.

The PROTAC viruses target a selected viral protein to the ubiquitin-proteasome system, dramatically reducing their replication while retaining their capacity to elicit robust and broad cellular immunity. In an article published in Nature’s Biotechnology, the authors demonstrate protection against the viral challenges of the influenza A virus in mice and ferrets. The concept of using PROTACs to reduce the effectiveness of live viruses for use as vaccines — not only against influenza but also against other viral diseases for which effective vaccines are lacking — is promising and warrants further investigation.

Despite their effectiveness and widespread acceptance, influenza vaccines have well-known limitations. Influenza viruses undergo antigenic drift — a gradual accumulation of point mutations due to error-prone replication; mutations in certain cellular proteins can generate variants that evade immunity induced by prior infection or vaccination. Although influenza vaccines are re-formulated annually to account for antigenic drift, further antigenic drift during the 6- to 8-month period of vaccine manufacture can diminish their effectiveness. Influenza viruses can also undergo an antigenic shift. The antigenic shift usually occurs through the exchange of gene segments between animal and/or human influenza viruses and can generate variants that cause pandemics.

PROTAC technology may offer unique advantages for generating broad and robust immune responses. Implementing a seasonal influenza vaccine strategy using PROTAC viruses would require the design and co-administration of four vaccines to protect against both circulating Influenza A subtypes (H1N1 and H3N2) and B lineage viruses (Victoria and Yamagata). The authors believe it may be prudent to target the same viral protein in the four viruses to reduce the risk that replicative competence would be restored through genetic reassortment. PROTAC vaccines would not face the problems of egg-adaptive mutations and the introduction of glycosylation motifs that compromise the effectiveness of egg-based vaccines, making it possible to replicate faster. Choosing the best viral protein(s) to target and ensuring efficient split is among the details to be investigated as the authors’ approach is extended to additional viral pathogens.

Do you think this will change the general view of vaccines in society for the better or worse?

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Explorers Blog

Eco-friendly plug to treat Nosebleeds

Biggest M&A's of 2022 in BioPharma

New Heart Model Developed to Treat Heart Failure

PROTACs: A New Route to Vaccines

Dr. Eric L Reese I

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