Biologically Inspired Engineering, synbio, synthetic biology, crispr
Simons Chase 
According to a report by the World Bank, China is well advanced in building a national innovation system (NIS) capable of supplying the innovation and technologies needed for a growing economy that is productivity-led. Currently, the country’s NIS focuses on discovering new innovations and accelerating the diffusion of technologies throughout to support a rapidly increasing … Read more
BeiGene was founded nearly ten years ago in China. Today, the company a lot more than a cute-sounding name. It is a commercial-stage, publicly-traded biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing innovative molecularly-targeted and immuno-oncology drugs for the treatment of cancer. The Chinese biotech giant raised $2 billion in a registered direct offering in July. … Read more
Two research teams recently reported results from studies involving the long-term evaluation of non-invasive DNA fragments in blood. Evaluating these DNA fragments is called liquid biopsy, and this type of biopsy could vastly improve outcomes through early detection and low false positive rates for a wide variety of cancers. One result is Chinese and the … Read more
It all began with an unexpected discovery. CureVac’s founder, Dr. Ingmar Hoerr (a doctoral student at the time), discovered that when it was administered directly into tissue, the historically unstable biomolecule mRNA could be used as a therapeutic vaccine or agent after optimization—no complicated reformulations or molecular packaging needed. With a single discovery, CureVac opened … Read more
Admetsys is developing what can be described as an artificial pancreas for patients requiring precise glucose control in a hospital setting. I spoke with Jeff Valk, CEO, who aptly walked me through his company’s technology and its vital importance for, “The most metabolically variable humans on earth.” To put at-risk patients on a solid ground … Read more
One can think of the rapid growth of genome sequencing as producing a special kind of exhaust in the form immunologically relevant data that has accumulated in large quantities in databases around the world. Those databases can be mined. Immunoinformatics is emerging as an important tool at the intersection of experimental immunology and various computational … Read more
Ansa Biotechnologies, Inc, a Berkeley, CA-based startup, is developing a technique to control additions of a polymerase that use TdT for de novo DNA synthesis. The ability to synthesize “gene-length” DNA molecules (>500 bases) is invaluable for biological and biomedical research and is a key enabling technology for the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology. … Read more
iTeos, a Cambridge, MA-based company, plans to raise $151 million by offering 8.9 million shares at a price range of $16-$18. Its fully-diluted market cap would be $579 million at the midpoint of the proposed price range. iTeos a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focusing on the discovery and development of a new generation of immuno-oncology therapeutics. … Read more
Relay Therapeutics is a clinical-stage precision medicines company innovating in the drug discovery process with an initial focus on enhancing small molecule therapeutic discovery in targeted oncology. The company leverages insights into protein motion and how this dynamic behavior relates to protein function. These insights may enable Relay to more effectively drug protein targets that … Read more
In June, Repare Therapeutics Inc (RPTX) raised $220 million by offering 11 million shares at $20, the high end of the upwardly revised range of $18 to $20. Repare is a pre-clinical biotech company developing gene therapies for solid tumors based on a synthetic lethality (SL) approach to drug development. The company has advanced a … Read more