The Bio Report

Bridging the Gulf Between the Promise and Reality of Precision Health

The ability to identify diseases at their earliest stages through the detection of minute levels of biomarkers offers the potential to make interventions before the outward physical manifestations of illnesses can bloom and long-term damage can occur. Quanterix is developing a platform of ultra-sensitive biomarker tests to give researchers greater insight into the transition from health to disease and the ability to detect diseases at an earlier point in their development. We spoke to Kevin Hrusovsky, chairman, president, and CEO of Quanterix, about the company’s ability to detect minute amounts of biomarkers, the implications this has for drug development and diagnostics, and how this can help drive a future of precision health.

Using Synthetic Biology to Craft One-Time, Programmable mRNA Therapeutics

The marriage of synthetic biology to mRNA is creating the potential for a range of programmable therapeutics that can provide new ways of treating deadly and chronic diseases. Strand Therapeutics is creating a platform for developing these long-acting mRNA drugs that it says can be precise, multi-functional, and deliver potentially curative treatments with a single dose. We spoke to Jake Becraft, co-founder and CEO of Strand, about the company’s programmable mRNA therapeutic platform, how it works, and the indications it is pursuing.

Using a Digital Cognitive Behavior Therapy to Treat Diabetes and Heart Disease

Cardiometabolic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, have long been treated with pharmacologic interventions. Better Therapeutics believes cognitive behavioral therapy delivered through its prescription digital therapeutics platform, will provide better outcomes at a lower cost. We spoke to David Perry, co-founder and executive chairman of Better Therapeutics, about the company’s prescription digital therapeutics platform, the case for personalized cognitive behavior therapy delivered this way, and what it will take to get doctor to prescribe it and payers to reimburse for it.

Disrupting Pain Signals with Precision

The side effects of opioids and the potential for addiction underlies the need for new approaches to the treatment of pain. SiteOne therapeutics is developing a pipeline of therapies that target sodium ion channels to block the electric signals sent from the site of pain. Unlike other similar drugs, SiteOne is able to target these sodium channels with great specificity to avoid the types of side effect that have limited the value of drugs that target these proteins. We spoke to John Mulcahy, president and CEO of SiteOne, about the company’s approach to pain, its pipeline, and how its therapies are able to hit their targets with precision. Special offer to listeners of The Bio Report: With the Digital Library from DeepDyve, you can search 100 million scientific papers with full access to 20 million articles, annotate them, and share with colleagues. It’s one-stop, affordable research. Try one month of DeepDyve’s enterprise service for free. Go to deepdyve.com/podcast and use the code BIOREPORT.

A Diagnostics Company Moves to Developing Precision Cancer Therapies

Earlier this year NovelluxDx rebranded itself as Fore Biotherapeutics signaling a shift from being a diagnostics company to its new life as a precision cancer therapeutics drug developer. Building on its functional genomics platform, the company is in-licensing small molecule drug candidates it sees having potential to treat hyper-targeted patient populations. We spoke to Usama Malik, CEO of Fore Biotherapeutics, about the move from diagnostics to drug development, the approach Fore is taking, and why it thinks it can see value in molecules that others may miss.

Characterizing the Immunome at Scale

When variants of the COVID-19 virus emerged in late 2020, it raised concerns about whether people already infected with the original virus, or vaccinated against it, would be able to generate a protective immune response that would confer protection against these new strains. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Johns Hopkins University recently reported encouraging findings from a study that took a detailed look at the antibodies in the blood from COVID-19 patients. To do this, they used a deep immunomics technology platform developed by ImmunoScape. We spoke to Brian Abel, senior director of business development at ImmunoScape and lead of the company’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, about the COVID-19 study, the company’s technology, and how it is being used to develop the next generation of immunotherapies.

Delivering Oxygen to Tissue in Need

Hypoxia, a potentially fatal shortage of oxygen in tissues, is a complicating factor in a variety of serious illnesses including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory conditions. Diffusion Pharmaceuticals lead experimental candidate, TSC, enhances the ability of the body to deliver oxygen to where it is needed most. We spoke to Bob Cobuzzi, CEO of Diffusion Pharmaceuticals, about hypoxia, the company’s lead therapeutic candidate to address it in a broad range of conditions, and its clinical development strategy for the drug.

Using Gene Therapy to Create a Drug Biofactory within a Patient

Wet age-related macular degeneration is a progressive disease and a leading cause of vision loss in patients over the age of 60. Vision loss is caused by the leakage of blood and other fluid from abnormal blood vessel growth underneath and into the retina. Though the condition is treated by a class of therapies known as VEGF inhibitors, these biologics need to be repeatedly injected into patients’ eyes and for a variety of reasons patients’ real-world experience with the drugs don’t match clinical trial outcomes. Adverum Biotechnologies is developing a gene therapy to treat the condition. Rather than addressing an underlying genetic cause though, the gene therapy carries a sequence that causes the eye to produce aflibercept, the VEGF inhibitor marketed as Eyelea and Zaltrap. We spoke to Laurent Fischer, CEO of Adverum, about the company’s gene therapy, how it works, and why the one-and-done approach could translate into better results for patients.