Biomarker Commons

NextBio recently announced a multi-year collaboration with Sanofi (NYSE:SNY) aimed at using NextBio Clinical to incorporate patient omics and clinical data into Sanofi's drug research and development, as part of Sanofi's Translational Medicine for Patients (TM4P) program.

Head protection plays a vital role in the health and safety of any athlete participating in helmeted sports. In a move that could help revolutionize football player safety, the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), and Easton-Bell Sports through its Riddell brand, announced recently it would work together on a study designed to advance athlete concussion detection and treatment. Information gathered through the study will also be used to develop new football headgear and further refine updates to player monitoring technology.

When Colin Hill’s father was diagnosed with later-stage prostate cancer last summer, he was treated the same as every other patient with the illness.

This standardized approach bothered Hill, who believes medicine should approach each patient’s illness as unique, with medication tailored to the person’s history and biology.

“You show up to the hospital, and it’s like Groundhog Day,” Hill said, with patients being cared for the same way, over and over again. “It’s this outdated standard of care created for this hypothetical average patient. But no one’s an average patient.”

Adaptive Biotechnologies recently announced that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb for the discovery of immunological biomarkers in oncology.

Dr. Tom Hudson, President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) recently announced a collaboration with Janssen Inc. to find and test new biomarkers to identify patients with hormone resistant prostate cancer at high risk for disease progression and biomarkers of response to therapy. These biomarkers could lead to more personalized treatments and fewer side effects for prostate cancer patients.

BioFocus recently announced that it has extended its collaboration agreement with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, a not-for-profit organization focused on developing therapies for Parkinson’s disease. Based on the success of the project to date, BioFocus will continue the optimization of agents for disease specific biomarkers.