This month’s launches, expanded facilities, partnerships, and other news includes items from Veeva, Hovione, Florence, Medidata, and other notable firms.
This month’s launches, expanded facilities, partnerships, and other news includes items from Veeva, Hovione, Florence, Medidata, and other notable firms.
Aion Labs, an innovation lab aimed at driving adoption of artificial intelligence and computational science to solve therapeutic challenges, has announced its official launch and opening of its Israel headquarters. It comes out of an alliance among pharma giants AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, and Teva; and tech/biotech leaders Amazon Web Services and Israel Biotech Fund.
Mati Gill, Aion Labs CEO, said, “Our R&D needs-based approach, coupled with our outstanding alliance, is poised to transform the process of therapeutic discovery and development. With a strong talent pool, AI technology at our core and a significant commitment of the Israeli government, we hope to contribute to the health and well-being of humankind.”
Veeva Systems has announced its Veeva Digital Trials Platform, technology aimed at advancing clinical trial execution via a connected technology ecosystem connecting patients, sites, and sponsors. Now available for early adopters, it includes the company’s Vault Clinical Suite, SiteVault Free, and MyVeeva for Patients.
“By bringing together the growing community of research sites using Veeva SiteVault Free with sponsors using Vault Clinical Suite, we aim to accelerate the move to digital trial execution,” said Jim Reilly, vice president for Vault R&D at Veeva. “The Veeva Digital Trials Platform will make clinical trials easier and faster for patients, sites, and sponsors.”
Spray-drying and particle engineering specialist Hovione has announced plans to expand facilities around the world, to the tune of an estimated $170m USD. The move to increase its worldwide capacity and capabilities reportedly will support the company’s future growth objectives.
“Hovione is in it for life and what better way to manifest this than through expansion of our global capacity and capabilities. Our sustainable organic growth strategy will allow us to keep true to those values that have been guiding us for more than 60 years,” said Guy Villax, CEO.
Digital healthcare company Vivalink has enhanced its Biometrics Data Platform to help decentralized trial teams capture, process and analyze real-world patient physiology data. Features include comprehensive set of medical wearables, automated data management capabilities, FDA-cleared data analytics, and data integration with clinical trial management systems.
“Vivalink automates every aspect of remote patient data collection, transmission, management, and integration on behalf of the trial sponsors, making it easy for the clinical research team to focus on uncovering critical insights that impact drug development,” said Jiang Li, CEO of Vivalink. “Our global regulatory compliance, and experience as a leader in providing an open physiological data platform for more than one hundred virtual healthcare customers puts us in a unique position to facilitate the technical and qualitative aspects of dealing with data capture and processing in real world environments.”
Florence Healthcare’s digital research platform Florence eBinders has been tapped to support study operations for SWOG Clinical trials Partnerships. The technology reportedly will be used to help streamline regulatory operations, study-startup, and remote site monitoring in SWOG’s multi-center studies.
Blake Adams, vice president of marketing for Florence, says working with SWOG CTP is a natural extension of their mission to advance research with the world’s best organizations. “Over one-third of oncology Principal Investigators (PI) use our platform, which allows us to support an active community and develop world-class software to make operations easier for cutting edge research organizations.”
Respiratory trial solutions company Vida Diagnostics has launched its cloud-based Vida Intelligence Portal, which uses artificial intelligence to help automate arduous, time-sensitive tasks associated with imaging in such trials.
“Our aim is to help sites and sponsors use the power of AI to analyze data for consistency and generate new categories of lung biomarkers; we’re excited to see sites already realizing this promise as well as experiencing more efficient trial imaging operations,” said Todd Johnson, Vida chief technology officer. “The Vida Intelligence Portal also provides a foundation for future innovations we can’t wait to deliver.”
Gamma BioSciences has announced its cell-selection and bioseparation company BioMagnetic Solutions has signed an agreement do build a production facility at Penn State’s Innovation Park. With an anticipated open date in mid-2022, the facility will feature more than 13,000 square feet of cGMP manufacturing, laboratory, and office space.
Gamma Biosciences chief technical officer Phil Vanek said, “When we connected with the Innovation Park and the Center of Excellence in Industrial Biotechnology teams at Penn State, we knew we had found the right location to work on developing this game-changing technology while also contributing to this thriving ecosystem to support education and innovation.”
Informatics firm ACD/Labs has released Spectrus JS, a browser-based NMR processing software tool. According to the company, it enables users to securely process NMR data from any major NMR instrument vendors across Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems.
"I could not have asked for more than this innovative browser-based NMR processing software with all its accessibility benefits," said Kristóf Cank, a Spectrus JS beta-tester and final year PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. "Spectrus JS makes structure elucidation comfortable from anywhere with its intuitive, highly customizable, and super easy-to-learn interface."
Medidata, a Dassault Systèmes company, has announced its Rave Imaging cloud-based, secure clinical trial imaging management platform has reached the milestone of having supported more than 1,000 imaging studies. According to the company, the technology provides real-time visibility into all imaging-related trial activities across all Rave Imaging trials.
“This is a wonderful milestone to celebrate with our outstanding team and pioneering clients,” said Rama Kondru, co-CEO of Medidata. “With the flurry of M&A activity in the imaging technology and core lab space, it will be critical for sponsors to optimize their medical image management strategy with a trusted, experienced, enterprise partner.”
Digital histopathology service provider HistoWiz has announced the closing of a $32m USD Series A financing round. The investment reportedly will enable the firm to focus on implementing automation and artificial intelligence solutions to share quality slides online.
“Our mission is to help researchers find cures by accelerating histopathology and enabling global collaboration,” said Ke Cheng, founder and CEO of HistoWiz. “The Series A financing will allow HistoWiz to expand our services, build a Flagship lab with the latest tissue-sectioning and embedding robots, grow our team to better serve clients, and continue to innovate in this field.”
