The skin safari: looking back on a decade of skin microbiome discoveries

Posted 10th February 2020 by Liv Sewell

Ahead of the Microbiome and Probiotics R&D and Business Collaboration Forum, Dr Monty Lyman takes us on a journey through the last decade of ground-breaking skin microbiome research, and peers ahead into the next.

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Novel biomarkers and the development of a point-of-care test for fatty liver disease

Posted 7th February 2020 by Liv Sewell

Ahead of The 3rd Global NASH Congress, Dr Bevin Gangadharan explains how he helped to discover novel NAFLD biomarkers and their role in the development of a point-of-care test for NAFLD.

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9 Specifications to guide successful Automated sampling in Bioprocessing

Posted 3rd February 2020 by Liv Sewell

Automation and digitisation are becoming increasingly important in the modern environment of bioprocesses 4.0. A new wave of biopharmaceutical manufacturing is already breaking. Driven by the PAT initiative and the goal of a well-understood and optimally controlled process, the digital transformation of bioprocesses is inevitable.

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Screening for NAFLD in primary care: a preventative wonder or are we barking up the wrong tree?

Posted 31st January 2020 by Joshua Sewell

The burden of chronic liver disease has a substantial health and economic burden within the UK. Chronic liver disease is the fifth most common cause of death in the UK and of those five, it is the only one with numbers that are rising. With this in mind, it would make sense that earlier detection of liver disease in primary care is key to improving outcomes and reducing costs.

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Why is healthcare so vulnerable to cybercrime?

Posted 29th January 2020 by Joshua Sewell

When it comes to cybersecurity, healthcare systems are some of the most difficult to secure, not just because of technological issues. Healthcare providers also need to make difficult decisions about investing in information technologies, security, or the staff and medical facilities which deliver front line healthcare services.

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CE and HPLC applications for rAAV characterisation

Posted 17th January 2020 by Joshua Sewell

Despite recent advances in the gene therapy field, significant challenges lie ahead for the consistent manufacturing and release of these medicines. Analytical methods and automation need to keep pace as more medicines move towards the market and more quality control resources are required. Well-developed methods on robust platforms will be crucial to ensure the quality of these novel medicines for the doctors and patients who need them.

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Improving the selection of candidate CD8+ T cell epitopes for immunotherapy

Posted 6th January 2020 by Joshua Sewell

Alongside the talks at our conferences, the poster presentations are a huge part of the knowledge sharing that takes place. We’re thrilled to be able to take a closer look at this poster from the Research & Technology Series, presented by Wim van Esch and the team at Sanquin.

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Inspirata and Cirdan Announce New Technical Partnership at the Digital Pathology & AI Congress

Posted 18th December 2019 by Joshua Sewell

At the 6^th Digital Pathology & AI Congress, Inspirata and Cirdan announced their new technical partnership designed to empower NHS clinical laboratories to accelerate their use of digital pathology.

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Wild wheat, plant genomics, and food security

Posted 24th February 2020 by Liv Sewell

Wheat is the most widely grown crop in the world, providing 20% of the calories and proteins consumed by humankind. More than one fifth of the projected yield is lost every year to disease. Dr Brande Wulff, Group Leader at the John Innes Centre, and speaker at the 8^th Plant Genomics and Gene Editing Congress, Europe, is leading research aiming to reduce the proportion of wheat lost to pathogens and increase global food security…

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5 key requirements for unleashing innovation in the cannabis industry

Posted 21st February 2020 by Joshua Sewell

The cannabis industry faces a systemic problem where the legal nomenclature used to distinguish varietals of ​Cannabis Sativa is known to be unrelated to the genetic identity of the plant.¹ Cannabis plants being bought and sold under any specific trade name can be genetically unrelated and may not even have a shared cultivation history.

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Managing plant stress in the era of climate change: Realising global sustainable development goals

Posted 17th February 2020 by Liv Sewell

Dr Salme Timusk was the first to show that native soil bacteria have the ability to protect plants against drought conditions. Salme writes here about plant microbiome interaction studies: how they can facilitate plant health and contribute to solutions for climate change.

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11 ways to enable more UK patients to benefit from medicinal cannabis

Posted 14th February 2020 by Joshua Sewell

Medicinal cannabis was legalised in the UK in November 2018, yet there have been fewer than ten new prescriptions made through the NHS. Most of the prescriptions made have been private, and are financially out of reach for most patients, costing up to £2000 per month.

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A Universal Genetic Switch for Increasing Plant Yields, Stress Tolerance and Perishable Product Shelf Life

Posted 12th February 2020 by Joshua Sewell

Food waste is a significant problem globally and contributes to huge agricultural losses. Roughly one-third of all food is wasted: 1.3 billion tons per year. It is no surprise that the UN has a Sustainable Development Goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030.

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Why are start-ups such hotbeds for innovation?

Posted 5th February 2020 by Joshua Sewell

This article is republished with kind permission from Biovox. The original article can be found here. This article was guest authored with Biovox by Willem Broekaerk from V-Bio Ventures.

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Integrating new breeding technologies: a game changer for developing future crops

Posted 27th January 2020 by Liv Sewell

With an ever-increasing human population, predicted to be 10 billion people by 2050, studies estimate that we need to double the rate of genetic gain in our crop improvement programs globally to meet this demand. Dr Lee Hickey is a plant breeder and crop geneticist. He and his team are seeking to develop plant breeding tools that could help to enable this genetic gain. 

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Vertically transmitted endophyte improved plant-rhizobacteria interaction

Posted 14th January 2020 by Joshua Sewell

Plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) have been identified as potential biofertilizers, eco-friendly, renewable and have been demonstrated to actively restore soil fertility. Beyond this, they have been shown to be a promising biological resource to augment chemical fertilizer, and drastically reduce its application and subsequent negative effects.

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Examining Blockchain Systems & Designing Smart Contracts

Posted 13th August 2018 by Jane Williams

The blockchain has the potential to enable the collaboration between patients, researchers, and care providers to provide individualised care for patients, but how can this technology be harnessed in a practical way?

This was one of the key questions that was asked at the Blockchain in Healthcare Congress and we had the pleasure of welcoming an array of expert speakers from pharma, academia, and industry to provide the answer.

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The role of extrinsic motivation in sports and physical activity

Posted 20th June 2018 by Jane Williams

Motivation is one of the most significant psychological concepts in many areas of life – from work and education to achieving personal goals. In sports and physical activity, motivation plays an especially important part due to the fact that, to millions of people worldwide, staying fit and active is not an obligation or a professional prerequisite, but rather a personal goal. Blockchain technology, together with elements of gamification, may actually help people achieve this goal.

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Conciliating Blockchain and GDPR

Posted 8th June 2018 by Jane Williams

Aurélie Bayle is a Data Protection Officer at be-ys: a role she considers to be at the heart of the new legal framework for any company.

Before GDPR came into effect on 25^th May 2018, she was working towards global compliance, which involved completing all the steps given by the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, an advisory board made up of a representative from the data authority of each EU Member State, the European Data Protection Supervisor, and the European Commission. Her duties have included auditing the structures and processes, preparing the data protection impact assessments, checking the compliance of processing activities, analysing the risks of the processing in the medical area, preparing new processes and policies about data protection, and asking data processors about their own compliance.

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When Blockchain Meets the Right to be Forgotten: Technology Versus Law

Posted 2nd May 2018 by Jane Williams

Over the past few years, the popularity of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies has increased and has reached important notoriety, not only in scientific and IT journals, but also in the media. Although there are many kinds of cryptocurrencies in circulation nowadays, the most popular is Bitcoin.

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Supporting Blockchain Startups: An Open Letter from Katherine Merton

Posted 27th April 2018 by Jane Williams

Dear colleagues,

The blockchain technology market is expected to grow to 2.3 billion US dollars by 2021, from 339.5 million US dollars in 2017. [1] With an annual growth rate of 61.5%, it is one of the fastest growing technologies in the healthcare industry.

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The Big List of Microfluidics Companies & Investors

Posted 25th April 2018 by Jane Williams

The microfluidic-based devices market has been growing since 2014 due to the increasing point of care testing demand and the miniaturisation of microfluidic chips. 

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What will we do with all this data?

Posted 16th April 2018 by Jane Williams

The amount of data we are creating every day has increased exponentially to match the rise in use of smart and connected devices. The internet of things has connected every aspect of our lives to the digital realm: most of these devices operate by tracking your habits, movements, preferences, voice, and more, then logging those habits online. Specifically, the collection of health data has become abundant, because most people now have or wear some sort of device to track daily patterns, steps, cycles, and more. Even our phones often default to track these things for us, whether we choose to enable the function or not.

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How Standards & Standardised Infrastructure Fuel Innovation

Posted 4th April 2018 by Jane Williams

It might surprise a lot of people to learn that standards can be viewed as a tool to support innovation, to set businesses free and to focus on the core of their product where their expertise lie. When working with the use of electronic communication systems within the entire healthcare sector, the main focal point is often ensuring a good support for collaboration and work processes.

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