Saving DNA for a Rainy Day: Will GenVault's Method Encourage the Practice?
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Many pharmaceutical companies already take and keep blood samples from patients in clinical trials, knowing that the DNA therein could expose a genetic basis for side effects. As clinical trials continue growing larger at FDA's request, drugmakers will confront the expanding challenge and cost of storing lots of samples. GenVault aims to convince pharma companies and medical centers that its new automated DNA storage system offers big advantages over freezers conventionally used to store blood.
You may also be interested in...
Perlegen: Will Numbers Enable Pharmacogenomics
Until now, Perlegen contends, pharmacogenomics has failed to deliver because no one has had the statistical power to show connections. With its whole genome scanning technology, Perlegen aims to prove that it can come up with usable and predictive markers of drug response by inexpensively screening for millions of SNPs and analyzing subsequent patterns--even without any significant biological understanding. The start-up aims to use its technology to help compounds win regulatory approval and more market share than they otherwise could. Perlegen also plans to support in-licensed drug candidates and seek disease genes. It wants a share of drug sales its studies enable, and to leverage all the IP it can capture. Absent its own drug discovery and development program, Perlegen needs partners to provide the compounds and clinical samples with which it can create pharmacogenomic data and secure an FDA imprimatur. Competitors argue that smaller sets of data, informed by a clearer biological understanding, will provide equally effective pharmacogenomic data, cheaper.
Super-Specialist CROs: Commercializing Pharma R&D Expertise
Outsourcing is not just for mundane pharma services anymore. Increasingly, drugmakers are contracting for specialized R&D assistance they expect to provide strategic as well as tactical advantages.
Spero Therapeutics: Remodeling Antibiotics
Like other companies investigating entirely new ways of treating bacterial infections, biotech start-up Spero is increasingly aware that novel antibiotics may need to travel new clinical and regulatory pathways to market.