MEDICAL
PhageNova Bio, Inc. | December 14, 2020
PhageNova Bio, Inc. ("PhageNova") is pleased to declare the distribution of information created through a sponsored research agreement with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The Med (a Cell Press distribution) article, entitled Targeted Phage Display-Based Pulmonary Vaccination in Mice and Non-human Primates, portrays another technique for protected and effective pulmonary delivery of therapeutics, including an aerosol vaccination strategy which is being developed to address the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
"Our targeted method of pulmonary delivery is the initial step towards the development of aerosol phage-based vaccines for human applications against multiple diseases," says Renata Pasqualini, PhD, co-senior study author, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of PhageNova, and Chief of the Division of Cancer Biology, Department of Radiation Oncology at Rutgers Cancer Institute and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. "Other advantages of phage particles are that they are highly stable under harsh environmental conditions, and their large-scale production is extremely cost-effective compared with other vaccine strategies because they don't need to be refrigerated, which is a particularly important requirement for the developing world."
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MEDTECH
Aanika Biosciences | December 01, 2021
Biotech start-up Aanika Biosciences today announced the initial closing of its $12 million Series A round, led by Jon Cholak of Adit Ventures along with existing investors Draper Associates and SOSV. The investment will help scale the company’s food tracing technology platform, advance research and expand its Brooklyn food safety and manufacturing facility to approximately 30,000 square feet.
Aanika's proprietary technology is designed to accelerate the speed and accuracy of how food safety issues are handled. The platform, which uses edible microbial ‘tags,’ has already been tested on leafy greens and has the potential to be applied to other foods and ingredients including oils, coffee, meats and grains.
“Innovation in food safety is long overdue, and there couldn’t be a more important time to bring a technology like this to the market. The pandemic has truly exposed the fragility of our supply chain. Being able to expand and build out our capability will give farmers, insurers, food companies and consumers an added layer of transparency and security, as well as minimize the economic and environmental impact of food recalls.”
Dr. Ellen Jorgensen, Chief Science Officer for Aanika
The technology enables farmers to 'watermark' crops with edible, food-friendly microbes that can be detected at any point in the product’s journey through the supply chain, so that when there is a case of foodborne illness it can be traced directly to the source.
“Foodborne illness impacts over 50 million people and costs the U.S. tens of billions of dollars a year. Our technology can help minimize the impact and we are developing solutions that may prevent it from happening in the first place,” said co-founder and CEO of Aanika, Vishaal Bhuyan. “Identifying the origin of food recalls is just the start of what this platform can do. We are excited to see how far we can push our microbial technology to add value in the form of combating contamination, increasing nutritional content and supporting crop health. We are also exploring how our technology can even revolutionize agricultural insurance underwriting. All of this is driven by the power of biology.”
"We believe Aanika could transform the food system as their traceability technology can integrate with the blockchain and ensure high quality data from end-to-end,” said Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Partner of Draper Associates.
About Aanika Biosciences
Aanika Biosciences was co-founded in 2018 by Vishaal Bhuyan after he personally experienced the consequences of ordering fresh, ethically sourced seeds and receiving stale, contaminated products instead. He made it is his mission to create a safer food supply by finding a way to track, trace and authenticate products. Aanika’s customized microbial-based tags help companies gain valuable insights about their supply chains, help their customers make better consumption choices, and create a more sustainable world.
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MEDTECH
CosmosID | September 27, 2021
A complete analysis of the microbiome should combine taxonomic profiling ("who is there?") with functional characterization ("what are they doing?") to discover the capabilities of an entire community of microorganisms. But research teams often require specialized training and extensive computational infrastructure to establish an in-house suite of tools for processing shotgun metagenomic data – and even with the right know-how, the processing can be both time-consuming and challenging.
CosmosID®, known for the most accurate, multi-kingdom, strain level taxonomic profiling technology, has added a functional analysis module to its popular online user-interface, renamed 'CosmosID-HUB: Microbiome'.
Now, in addition to microbiome sequencing services out of its Germantown, MD, laboratory, its industry-leading team of bioinformaticians and software developers, has unveiled a suite of new features for seamless analysis of the genomic potential of microbial communities:
Direct links from the platform to MetaCyc and GO terms databases.
Data import via direct upload, Illumina BaseSpace & automated SRA import from NCBI with analysis speeds up to 19X faster than open-source tools.
Find your organism or gene/pathway of interest with search functions, exportable charts & visualizations.
Comparative analysis software, complete with dynamic charts, graphs, and statistical significance testing.
Easy-to-navigate user interface OR command-line access.
Applicable to almost any sample type
Applicable to both metagenomic and metatranscriptomics data
Knowing the combined genomic potential of a microbial community is proving indispensable for practical applications of translational microbiome science, This cutting edge, accurate, easy and fast functional analysis feature is part of our ongoing mission to provide everything researchers need to complete their end-to-end microbiome analysis and lower the barrier to entry for those interested in the field.
- CosmosID CEO, Manoj Dadlani.
The updated web application is part of CosmosID's microbial genomics platform, CosmosID-HUB, which is continually expanding with various apps and modules for analyzing microbial communities and for inferring translational and actionable microbiome insights. Currently, CosmosID-HUB: Microbiome provides options for discovering antimicrobial resistance and virulence markers, microbial taxa (composition) and function whereas CosmosID-HUB: COVID-19 is a separate module for detecting the presence of COVID-19 and characterizing variants of concern/interest in both clinical and wastewater specimens. Researchers have the flexibility to access and pay for the type of analysis they require. Soon, CosmosID-HUB will include a revolutionary web application for microbiome multi-dimensional feature testing and multi-omics analysis.
In addition to strain-level resolution enabled by its curated databases of over 170,000 genomes and gene sequences, CosmosID® also offers next-generation sequencing services. To date, the company has demonstrated its best-in-class technology and won three different challenges for its detection accuracy, including both PrecisionFDA challenges as well as the Janssen/DNAnexus Mosaic 'Strain' challenge.
About CosmosID®
CosmosID® provides end-to-end solutions unlocking the microbiome. A provider of CLIA-certified & ICH-GCP compliant NGS Services and Bioinformatics Solutions, CosmosID offers a range of validated and optimized workflows for a range of applications including pharmaceutical R&D, infectious disease diagnostics, environmental testing, microbiome research, animal health, cosmetics & personal care as well as many more. CosmosID also offers independently validated, industry-leading pipelines for processing metagenomic data, yielding multi-kingdom, strain-level resolution with leading sensitivity and precision as well as functional characterization
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