News

A screening tool for ovarian and endometrial cancers has been developed by  Dr. John Martignetti and his teams at Danbury’s Rudy L. Ruggles Biomedical Research Institute and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “It could change everything,” said Martignetti, who is network director of the Laboratory for Translational Research at the Western Connecticut Health Network’s Ruggles Institute. “Late stage, 80 percent die of (ovarian) cancer. Early stage, 90 percent will live — so you’ve flipped everything.” more

Westport biotech Intensity Therapeutics has announced the completion of a $6.5 million Series B financing, which it plans to use to advance the clinical development of a cancer-treating drug. Intensity’s lead product candidate INT230-6 is a direct intratumoral injection that is being evaluated in a Phase 1/2 clinical study in patients with various advanced solid tumors. more

Vanessa Research has launched Seal’N Freeze, a compact device designed for the simultaneous cryogenic freezing of multiple tissue samples. Seal’N Freeze was developed to improve upon the standard laboratory process for snap-freezing tissue samples to be used in cryostat sectioning. The U.S. cryostat market is estimated to be worth over $1B annually, yet Seal’N Freeze is the first product to address the growing need for the hands-free batch processing of samples. more

Pfizer has gained FDA approval of three anti-cancer drugs in the last two months. As with virtually all Pfizer products, the drugs were developed, in part, at the New York-based pharmaceutical’s research and development laboratories on Eastern Point Road in Groton. With the need and demand for new drug treatments increasing, Pfizer’s Groton facility, where a variety of scientific disciplines share space, has stepped up the pace of drug development. more

As she begins her term as the UConn School of Pharmacy's new Pfizer Distinguished Chair in Pharmaceutical Technology, Diane Burgess says aspects of the pharmaceutical industry, like drug costs, are concerning. Her goals include promoting and growing pharmaceutical technology at UConn and promoting innovation and collaboration in the field ... more UConn Health professor of neuroscience Zhao-Wen Wang has received a grant for more than $2 million from the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study the function of gap junctions and chemical synapses in C. elegans neural circuit ... more Frederick Gibbons, a health-social psychologist at the University [...]

Bioasis has entered into a licensing agreement granting Prothena certain rights to use the Bioasis xB3 platform technology for neuroscience targets. Under the terms of the agreement, Bioasis will receive an upfront payment of US$1 million and may receive up to an additional US$33 million in options exercise, regulatory and commercial milestone payments, plus additional royalties on net sales from the licensed products. more

Using computer models, researchers have identified a potential new therapy that would reduce the long-term side effects of radiation therapy in pediatric brain cancer patients. Jackson Laboratory Professor Ching Lau, M.D., Ph.D is leading this exciting multi-institutional research team, and also serves as the Medical Director of Hematology-Oncology at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and is head of the Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology in the Department of Pediatrics at the UConn School of Medicine. more

Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Eli Lilly and Company, and Sema4 released results from a proof-of-concept study demonstrating that patient-derived cells offer a more effective approach for assessing drug response than conventional methods. These findings could pave the way for streamlined drug discovery, particularly for diseases such as schizophrenia that have seen little therapeutic innovation. more

The FDA has approved Pfizer's LORBRENA® [lor-BREN-ah] (lorlatinib), a third-generation anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) for certain patients with ALK-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). “Over the years, Pfizer has transformed research, management and treatment for patients with ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer. Building upon our extensive understanding of tumor complexity and treatment resistance, LORBRENA was discovered by Pfizer scientists and developed specifically to inhibit tumor mutations that may drive resistance to other ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors,” said Andy Schmeltz, Global President, Pfizer Oncology. more

Cybrexa Therapeutics has expanded its Scientific Advisory Board with the appointments of Geoffrey Shapiro, M.D., Ph.D. Director, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Timothy Yap MBBS, Ph.D., MRCP(UK), BSc (Hons), PgDip of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Cybrexa is a privately-held biotechnology company dedicated to developing an entirely new class of small molecule DNA repair inhibitors and DNA damaging agents (TSDs) that directly target the tumor microenvironment. Per Hellsund, President & CEO of Cybrexa, said, “Cybrexa is currently at a major inflection point as we rapidly move toward entering the clinic with the first candidate generated from our paradigm-changing [...]