Rapport Therapeutics Inc. launched with $100 million in series A funding and ambitious plans to bring a hitherto unprecedented level of precision to therapies for neurological disease. Although the Boston-based company is new to the world, its underlying platform has been a decade in the making, and it already has one clinical-stage asset, which is in development for seizure disorders. It is currently undergoing a phase I trial.
GE Healthcare Technologies Inc. has just commissioned the first hospital site in the world to deploy Omni Legend technology, their next-generation 100% digital PET-CT scanner. The Cancer University Institute of Toulouse Oncopole (IUCT-Oncopole) in France is routinely using this new platform for cancer patients.
Complete Genomics Inc. launched a new line of genetic sequencers designed to decode DNA in greater quantities – and at a lower price point – than existing sequencing tools. The new products could signal a new era of more affordable testing, leading to wider availability and the potential to fulfill the long-desired promise of precision medicine.
The COVID-19 pandemic provided opportunities for companies that provide telehealth solutions, and Taiwan-based Faceheart Inc has developed video-based measurement software that allows patients to be screened remotely using artificial intelligence (AI).
By combining drug sensitivity with genomic profiling of tumor cells, a study from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital with more than 800 patients has shown a wide diversity in drug sensitivity for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and defined six patterns of response to treatment. “This work provides a framework for ‘functional precision medicine’,” corresponding author Jun Yang, vice chair of the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, told BioWorld.
Los Angeles is one of the most diverse cities in the U.S. This diversity is evident at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a university that attracts students (37,000) and workers (22,090) from 118 countries. It is enough to go for a walk on campus or its surroundings to believe that one is at a United Nations convention. Researchers at the UCLA ATLAS Community Health Initiative has been capturing that diversity in a genomic biobank whose data will help to understand, anonymously, the genetic basis of certain diseases. With them, scientists will be able to design the best treatments for these patients.
A drug that Novartis AG discontinued in fragile X syndrome in 2014 after it failed in two phase II/III trials has been in-licensed by neuroscience specialist Stalicla SA, which plans to revive the prospects of the glutamate receptor antagonist by applying its precision medicine technology to identify likely responders.
There is little doubt that progress in many brain diseases is being hampered because many, maybe most, diagnostic categories do not reflect underlying brain processes. In other disease areas, modern genetic and genomic methods have arrived in the form of approved drugs, from KRAS inhibitors in cancer to PCSK9 inhibitors to lower cholesterol. But brain diseases are different. Psychiatry is simultaneously the most personal area of medicine, and the least precise.
Pharus Diagnostics Inc. emerged from stealth mode to streamline precision medicine-based cancer screening with its new multi-cancer early detection liquid biopsy test. Spun out from Hsinchu, Taiwan-based Quark Biosciences Taiwan Inc. in July 2022, Pharus is developing solutions to detect cancer early via Oncosweep, its multi-cancer early detection (MCED) liquid biopsy test that evaluates microRNA (miRNA) within the body.