Weight Loss Injections Show Promising Anti-Cancer Effects Beyond Weight Reduction
• Research presented at the European Congress on Obesity suggests weight loss injections may reduce obesity-related cancer risk by nearly 50%, potentially through anti-inflammatory mechanisms beyond simple weight reduction.
• Scientists from the University of Manchester are designing a large-scale clinical trial involving tens of thousands of patients to further investigate GLP-1 agonists as cancer prevention tools.
• Experts believe these findings could herald a "new dawn" in preventative cancer medicine, potentially benefiting even non-obese individuals with high cancer risk factors.
Belfast-Based Amply Discovery Secures $1.75M to Accelerate AI-Driven Drug Development for Cancer and Antimicrobial Resistance
• Belfast biotech startup Amply Discovery has raised $1.75 million in seed funding to advance its AI-powered drug discovery platform targeting aggressive cancers and antimicrobial resistance.
• The company, spun out from Queen's University Belfast in 2021, combines AI, next-generation sequencing, and synthetic biology to develop personalized treatments that account for genetic diversity.
• Funding will accelerate Amply's preclinical programs, including gene-silencing therapies for triple-negative breast cancer and nebulized treatments for drug-resistant lung infections.
Sonrai and Paige Partner to Accelerate Precision Medicine R&D with Advanced AI Capabilities
• Sonrai Analytics and Paige have formed a strategic partnership to integrate Paige's foundation models with Sonrai's cloud-based bioinformatics platform, making advanced AI capabilities accessible to non-technical users in biopharma.
• The collaboration aims to accelerate drug discovery, biomarker identification, and precision medicine applications by enabling researchers to extract deeper insights from multi-modal data including multi-omics and imaging.
• The partnership represents a significant advancement in AI-powered pharmaceutical research, particularly for developing AI-driven biomarkers in cancer and other diseases without requiring deep AI expertise.
Aviceda Therapeutics Completes Enrollment in Phase 2b SIGLEC Study of AVD-104 for Geographic Atrophy
• Aviceda Therapeutics has finished enrolling patients in its Phase 2b SIGLEC study, which is evaluating AVD-104 for geographic atrophy (GA) secondary to age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
• The study compares the safety and efficacy of high-dose AVD-104, low-dose AVD-104, and avacincaptad pegol, with approximately 100 patients in each arm.
• AVD-104 is a novel glyco-mimetic nanoparticle designed to reduce inflammation by targeting self-pattern recognition receptors on retinal immune cells.
• This Phase 2b trial is a significant step in assessing AVD-104's potential to slow GA lesion growth and improve visual function in patients with AMD.
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