ChromaCon is a company located in Zurich which appears to be spun out from the ETH (at least, one of the patents was filed by ETH, the MCSGP technology). They are developing chromatography equipment which maximizes yield by re-purifying less pure side fractions (those tails on your chromatography peak). The system has a high throughput, with their smallest instrument producing up to 20 g/day.
ChromaCon also has a sister company, Separicon, which uses the same technology for non-regulated industries (like food processing or chemical purification).
I see that ChromaCon is involved in an FP7 project, Optico which seeks to increase productivity at chemical and pharmaceutical plants. They also have worked with/been funded by Venturelab (a part of KTI/CTI - showing up once again).
Showing posts with label zurich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zurich. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Biognosys
Biognosys is a proteomics company located in Zurich and founded in 2008 by Dr. Oliver Rinner, Dr. Johan Malström, Dr. Philipp Antoni and Prof. Ruedi Aebersold, so it looks like it was spun out ETH.
Biognosys is looking to make it in the field of personalized medicine, something which is of great interest to pharmaceutical companies. The idea being (in the post-blockbuster world) you find a drug that works best on only a subset of the population. If you test this drug in clinical trials with all possible patients, it may not show significant results, but if you have a subset of responders, you could then market your drug to that smaller subset. So, no big blockbuster, but instead of a rejection you get a drug on the market. Of course, key to this is to identify which population responds to the drug.
Biognosys performs mass spec analysis on protein samples, including identification of modified peptides (for example you could identify protein phosphorylation) and they have complex evaluation software for the interpretation of the massive amount of data generated. To extend the technology past screening for personalized medicine, Biognosys wants to offer a 'protein passport', a yearly screening of your entire blood protein content. This seems like a decent business plan, yearly screening! However, as recently seen in the PSA screening debate, and the older breast-screening debate, over-screening can be a serious problem. Are changes you observe in your blood a natural result of ageing or change in diet or countless other reasons. Good validated markers are hard to find (and quite valuable). However, I think the method could provide interesting data for the characterization of population norms (kind of like the 1000 genome project). Maybe with enough characterization good markers can come out of the research.
Biognosys is looking to make it in the field of personalized medicine, something which is of great interest to pharmaceutical companies. The idea being (in the post-blockbuster world) you find a drug that works best on only a subset of the population. If you test this drug in clinical trials with all possible patients, it may not show significant results, but if you have a subset of responders, you could then market your drug to that smaller subset. So, no big blockbuster, but instead of a rejection you get a drug on the market. Of course, key to this is to identify which population responds to the drug.
Biognosys performs mass spec analysis on protein samples, including identification of modified peptides (for example you could identify protein phosphorylation) and they have complex evaluation software for the interpretation of the massive amount of data generated. To extend the technology past screening for personalized medicine, Biognosys wants to offer a 'protein passport', a yearly screening of your entire blood protein content. This seems like a decent business plan, yearly screening! However, as recently seen in the PSA screening debate, and the older breast-screening debate, over-screening can be a serious problem. Are changes you observe in your blood a natural result of ageing or change in diet or countless other reasons. Good validated markers are hard to find (and quite valuable). However, I think the method could provide interesting data for the characterization of population norms (kind of like the 1000 genome project). Maybe with enough characterization good markers can come out of the research.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Redbiotec
Redbiotec is a small company located near Zurich spun out from ETH in 2006 by Christian Schaub and Dr. Corinne John and is focused on developing vaccines (currently their pipeline is all preclinical).
Redbiotec develops virus-like particles (VLPs) which are non-replicating and allow surface protein expression, thus making them very useful as vaccines. Redbiotec constructs the VLPs using a co-expression system. Usually when proteins are expressed in the lab a one-promoter one-protein one-plasmid system is used. If you want to express several proteins together you can try to find enough plasmids which are compatible or you can try and put all the proteins into one plasmid. I have done multi-expression before, using a promoter and an IRES sequence in E. coli and it worked very well.
The Redbiotec system is based on the MultiBac system developed at ETH and you can express up to 10 different proteins with specific promoters (doesn't look like a system that utilizes IRES so it could probably be better controlled). It is based on the baculovirus expression system where protein is expressed in insect cells. One thing that isn't really detailed is what exactly goes into the virus like particle. Can the system express membrane bound proteins and are they working on this? Some of the viruses they are developing vaccines for are enveloped.
Redbiotec is funded in part by the venture capitalist group Redalpine. I see that the 3D microculture company InSphero I wrote about earlier is also funded by Redalpine. In addition to their own vaccine pipeline, Redbiotec also partners with other pharma and biotech companies. They describe their work in three general areas, vaccines, using the VLPs to help cancer therapeutics and to develop VLPs that express targets for antibody engineering.
Redbiotec develops virus-like particles (VLPs) which are non-replicating and allow surface protein expression, thus making them very useful as vaccines. Redbiotec constructs the VLPs using a co-expression system. Usually when proteins are expressed in the lab a one-promoter one-protein one-plasmid system is used. If you want to express several proteins together you can try to find enough plasmids which are compatible or you can try and put all the proteins into one plasmid. I have done multi-expression before, using a promoter and an IRES sequence in E. coli and it worked very well.
The Redbiotec system is based on the MultiBac system developed at ETH and you can express up to 10 different proteins with specific promoters (doesn't look like a system that utilizes IRES so it could probably be better controlled). It is based on the baculovirus expression system where protein is expressed in insect cells. One thing that isn't really detailed is what exactly goes into the virus like particle. Can the system express membrane bound proteins and are they working on this? Some of the viruses they are developing vaccines for are enveloped.
Redbiotec is funded in part by the venture capitalist group Redalpine. I see that the 3D microculture company InSphero I wrote about earlier is also funded by Redalpine. In addition to their own vaccine pipeline, Redbiotec also partners with other pharma and biotech companies. They describe their work in three general areas, vaccines, using the VLPs to help cancer therapeutics and to develop VLPs that express targets for antibody engineering.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
InSphero
InSphero is a company located close to Zurich in the Technopark, also spun off from ETH in 2009. Hmmm, next post will come from the romande side, I've got an interesting recent spin-off in Geneva to talk about next. Digression aside, InSphero sounds pretty futuristic. They develop 3D micro-tissues using a method of hanging-drop and they have many collaborators. The advantage of using 3D tissue culture is since there is no cell adherence to artificial surfaces (like the plastic bottoms of tissue culture plates), it is supposed to more closely replicate tissue in its native state.
The idea of eliminating toxic compounds early in screening is very enticing, although this also creates another barrier, if it isn't accurate it could lead to elimination of compounds that might have been very good. I think Derek Lowe covers a bit of this theme nicely.
InSphero also has some interesting funding, they are part of an FP7 consortium, an interesting funding branch that I haven't heard of before, the Future and Emerging Technologies Open Schema (FET-open), founding new, fragile and innovative ideas. They have also been supported by KTI through VentureLab.
The idea of eliminating toxic compounds early in screening is very enticing, although this also creates another barrier, if it isn't accurate it could lead to elimination of compounds that might have been very good. I think Derek Lowe covers a bit of this theme nicely.
InSphero also has some interesting funding, they are part of an FP7 consortium, an interesting funding branch that I haven't heard of before, the Future and Emerging Technologies Open Schema (FET-open), founding new, fragile and innovative ideas. They have also been supported by KTI through VentureLab.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Molecular Partners
Molecular Partners is in the news recently for striking a 62 million dollar deal with Allergan so I decided to do some research about this company.
Molecular Partners is another alternative scaffold biotechnology company and their fold of choice are the ankyrin repeat proteins based on work done by Andreas Plückthun at ETH in Zurich. These designed ankyrin repeat proteins (DARPins) are small, well produced in E. coli and can be engineered to reach high affinities. Molecular Partners has freedom to operate and a business model that is a combination of internal drug developments and partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. On their webpage, Molecular Partners claims their patents cover DARPins and other repeat proteins, without going in to the patents (yet) I speculate this includes modular leucine-rich repeat proteins which has also been investigated by Andreas Plückthun. What I like about the DARPin is the modular structure, and how you can increase potential binding area with the addition of more ankyrin repeat motifs, but at the cost of increased size.
As with Covagen Fynomers, DARPins can be strung together to create molecules with multiple specificities. The recent deal with Allergan includes MP0260, a DARPin with two specificities, although the structure of the compound is not divulged. Bi-specific binders seems to be the buzz word as of late, and a place where alternative scaffold proteins have an opportunity to shine, given the challenges of developing bi-specific antibodies, not impossible, just more challenging than genetically encoding the different blocks together. Currently Zymeworks is a company working on building bispecific antibodies.
The collaboration with Allergan has also lead to Molecular Partners' most advanced lead, in phase I/IIa clinical trials. This is one of the more advanced of the alternative scaffold proteins currently in clinical trials. I'll write more about that later one day.
More information about Molecular Partners and Allergan can be found in this EvaluatePharma article.
Molecular Partners is another alternative scaffold biotechnology company and their fold of choice are the ankyrin repeat proteins based on work done by Andreas Plückthun at ETH in Zurich. These designed ankyrin repeat proteins (DARPins) are small, well produced in E. coli and can be engineered to reach high affinities. Molecular Partners has freedom to operate and a business model that is a combination of internal drug developments and partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. On their webpage, Molecular Partners claims their patents cover DARPins and other repeat proteins, without going in to the patents (yet) I speculate this includes modular leucine-rich repeat proteins which has also been investigated by Andreas Plückthun. What I like about the DARPin is the modular structure, and how you can increase potential binding area with the addition of more ankyrin repeat motifs, but at the cost of increased size.
As with Covagen Fynomers, DARPins can be strung together to create molecules with multiple specificities. The recent deal with Allergan includes MP0260, a DARPin with two specificities, although the structure of the compound is not divulged. Bi-specific binders seems to be the buzz word as of late, and a place where alternative scaffold proteins have an opportunity to shine, given the challenges of developing bi-specific antibodies, not impossible, just more challenging than genetically encoding the different blocks together. Currently Zymeworks is a company working on building bispecific antibodies.
The collaboration with Allergan has also lead to Molecular Partners' most advanced lead, in phase I/IIa clinical trials. This is one of the more advanced of the alternative scaffold proteins currently in clinical trials. I'll write more about that later one day.
More information about Molecular Partners and Allergan can be found in this EvaluatePharma article.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Covagen
Covagen is a small, private company, located in Schlieren, close to Zurich in the Bio-Technopark and was founded in 2007 by Dr. Dragan Grabulovski and Dr. Julian Bertschinger.
Covagen is using the ‘alternative scaffold’ based on the human Fyn SH3 domain which they call Fynomers. Fynomers are part of the next step in drug development, an attempt to shrink the size of antibodies while at the same time maintaining high specificity and affinity. Development of this alternative scaffold started in the Prof. Dr. Dario Neri group at ETH. ETH is one of two Swiss federal technical Universities and also home of another alternative scaffold, the DARPins from Prof. Dr. Andreas Plückthun which have been spun off to Molecular Partners, also in the same Bio-Technopark.
Anyway, back to Covagen and Fynomers. With such a small domain, it is easy to string several together and development multi-specific binders, which is exactly what they have done with their bispecific TNF/IL-17A inhibitor. In December of 2011 they moved forward into preclinical development with this compound.
Three dimensional SH3 structure. Image generated from 4AFQ in the pdb database using PyMol.
Covagen is using the ‘alternative scaffold’ based on the human Fyn SH3 domain which they call Fynomers. Fynomers are part of the next step in drug development, an attempt to shrink the size of antibodies while at the same time maintaining high specificity and affinity. Development of this alternative scaffold started in the Prof. Dr. Dario Neri group at ETH. ETH is one of two Swiss federal technical Universities and also home of another alternative scaffold, the DARPins from Prof. Dr. Andreas Plückthun which have been spun off to Molecular Partners, also in the same Bio-Technopark.
Anyway, back to Covagen and Fynomers. With such a small domain, it is easy to string several together and development multi-specific binders, which is exactly what they have done with their bispecific TNF/IL-17A inhibitor. In December of 2011 they moved forward into preclinical development with this compound.
Three dimensional SH3 structure. Image generated from 4AFQ in the pdb database using PyMol.
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