Oncimmune announces new contract with global pharma company

The contract concerns profiling Immunoglobulin E autoantibodies in blood serum

Oncimmune, an autoantibody profiling company providing research services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry to enable the delivery of precision medicine, has announced a new contract with a global pharma company.

Following a successful pilot carried out for a major pharmaceutical company, Oncimmune has entered into an agreement for a major new project with the same customer, with a contract value of at least US$1.5m.

During the pilot project, Oncimmune was able to demonstrate that it can reliably profile Immunoglobulin E (‘IgE’) autoantibodies in blood serum using its high-throughput bead-based platform. The new project is expected to be delivered over the next six months, with the majority of the revenue therefore falling into FY2025.

Martin Gouldstone, CEO of Oncimmune said: “I am delighted that our scientific team has demonstrated our ability to measure IgE, which is much harder to detect in blood serum than other immunoglobulins, using our high-throughput platform.”

Oncimmune is a UK-based precision medicine company focused on analyzing immune interactions via autoantibody profiling. Collaborating with global pharmaceutical firms and CROs, Oncimmune aims to discover novel biomarkers to enhance targeted therapies for immune-mediated diseases, with its R&D facility in Dortmund, Germany.

Nature publishes new research on genetic causes of colorectal cancer

In the UK study, researchers analysed 2,023 bowel cancers from the 100,000 Genomes Project

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer globally, with more than 44,000 new cases of the disease diagnosed in the UK every year.

Now a study led by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), the University of Oxford and the University of Manchester has revealed previously unknown genetic causes of (CRC).

The new research, published in Nature, offers a novel view of the genetic landscape of CRC and treatment responses.

Led by Genomics England and NHS England, researchers analysed 2,023 bowel cancers from the 100,000 Genomes Project to identify new gene faults that lead to CRC. The research uncovered new CRC cancer sub-groups with specific genetic characteristics that affect how cancer behaves and responds to treatment.

Commenting on the findings, co-lead researcher and ICR’s professor of cancer genomics, Richard Houlston, said: “This research is a great insight into the biology of CRC, uncovering the clues as to how it develops, grows and responds to treatments.”

In total, the team identified over 250 key genes that play a crucial role in CRC, as well as four novel common sub-groups based on genetic features, along with several rare CRC sub-groups, which have different patient outcomes and may respond differently to therapy.

In addition, the team identified a variety of genetic mutation causes across different regions of the colorectum, highlighting differences in CRC causes between individuals, which could potentially be targeted with existing treatments currently used across other cancers.

eXmoor pharma’s manufacturing facility receives licence from MHRA

The company’s Cell & Gene Therapy Centre can now offer a full range of GMP services

Press release: eXmoor pharma, the full-service cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing partner, announced it has received a Manufacturing and Import Authorisation for Investigational Medicinal Products (MIA(IMP)) licence from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), authorising the manufacture of good manufacturing practice (GMP)-grade cell and gene therapy materials for use in clinical trials.

This follows a successful inspection of eXmoor’s Cell & Gene Therapy Centre in Bristol, marking the end of a two-year project to design, build and bring online a 65,000 state-of-the-art advanced therapies manufacturing facility.

The licence is a major milestone in eXmoor’s 20-year journey from a consultancy into a full-service, global CGT contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO). The Cell & Gene Therapy Centre has been designed in-house by eXmoor as a flexible and scalable manufacturing hub, with integrated process development and analytical labs, four GMP clean rooms and fill/finish capability.

It can support scale-up, optimisation and manufacture of cell therapies, RNA therapies and viral vectors, with up to 2 x 200L bioreactors and multiple autologous cell therapy stations per suite. In addition, the cutting-edge zero-carbon facility relies entirely on solar technology and heat pumps.

“This marks the beginning of a new era of growth for [the company], now offering a complete set of development, manufacturing and expert consulting services that support cell and gene therapy developers from research to the market,” said Angela Osborne, CEO of eXmoor pharma.


GOSH and Oliver Patch in cancer research partnership with Innovative Trials

Globally 400,000 children are impacted every year by cancers that include leukaemia and lymphoma

UK’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) Children’s Charity and the Oliver Patch Project in the US have come together with Innovative Trials to form two strategic partnerships to accelerate research into childhood cancers.

Innovative Trials has been working with the Oliver Patch Project and the GOSH charity since last year. Leukaemia and lymphoma are two of the most common childhood cancers that affect more than 6,000 children in the UK and US, and approximately 400,000 children globally, every year.

Innovative Trials is supporting two charitable initiatives in the UK and the US. In the UK, it is raising funds for GOSH Charity’s Build it. Beat it. appeal, which aims to raise £300 million to build a new Children’s Cancer Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), focusing on advancing cancer research and care for children. In the US, Innovative Trials donates $6 to the Oliver Patch Project for every child or teenager enrolled in a pediatric clinical trial through its Retention Patch Program. The Oliver Patch Project provides children with collectable patches, cards, animations, and coloring sheets during their treatment.

AMR testing technology from QuantaMatrix backed by research paper in Nature

The new test takes an average of 13 hours to identify the correct treatment compared to several days with current methods

Press release: QuantaMatrix, a clinical microbiology diagnostics company in Seoul, South Korea, has developed an all-in-one antimicrobial testing technology, ‘uRAST (Ultra-Rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing), and the findings have been published in the scientific journal Nature.

Sepsis, a life-threatening condition where timely treatment is critical, has a ‘golden hour’ for intervention. Every hour of delay in administering the correct antimicrobial treatment decreases patient survival by 9%, leading to a 30% mortality rate within 30 days.

Traditional antimicrobial testing methods can take days, often too long for effective sepsis treatment. The uRAST technology eliminates the need for the initial blood culture process, providing accurate results within just 13 hours after blood sampling. This enables doctors to prescribe the right antibiotic more quickly and potentially save lives.

“The Nature publication on uRAST highlights its potential to become the new standard in clinical microbiology,” said Sunghoon Kwon, CEO of QuantaMatrix.

uRAST has a 94.9% accuracy rate, aligning closely with existing methods and is also able to detect small quantities of bacteria in the early stages of infection. When tested at Seoul National University Hospital, uRAST reduced the time from positive blood culture results to optimal antimicrobial prescription to an average of 13 hours, compared to current methods that typically take 48-72 hours. This time reduction includes both testing and the often-overlooked waiting periods between different steps in traditional processes.