News roundup

Inaphaea news round-up: January & February 2024

This news round-up covers our updates and highlights from January and February.

It has been a busy start to the year for Inaphaea with events, a new collaboration, and progress in the lab.

To discuss any of our updates, please get in touch with Dr Andrew Carnegie, Head of Strategic Commercial Development.

News round-up January & February 2024

Collaboration with DefiniGEN

Our portfolio of services at Inaphaea is consistently growing, and we are pleased to announce our collaboration with DefiniGEN for profiling drug candidates for liver disease and liver toxicity using their in vitro, IPSC-derived, hepatocyte assays.

DefiniGEN’s mission is to navigate drug development programs through uncertain terrain, minimising risk while reducing costs and paving the way for a more efficient and effective future in the field of drug discovery and development.

Find out more about DefiniGEN’s in-vitro liver cell assay service here.

Celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is an annual event celebrated on 11 February and promotes the full and equal access and participation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

To mark this event, we spoke to our scientists Melissa Barr and Amelia Hatfield, who shared their thoughts on the landscape for women in science, their role models, and what needs to be done to encourage more young women to pursue a career in STEM.

Read their insights here.

‘Translating to liquid assets’ features in Laboratory News

An article authored by our director Suzy Dilly has been featured in Laboratory News. The piece describes the journey to building Inaphaea, including integrating the scientific assets we acquired from Imagen Therapeutics and developing our service offering.

Read the article on pages 19-21 of Issue 1 2024 here.

Introducing Inaphaea BioLabs

In our new three-part video series, we introduce Inaphaea BioLabs and explore how we work with our expert collaborators and our work with PDCs.

Watch our first video, where Dr Suzy Dilly, Dr Andrew Carnegie, Dr Gareth Griffiths, Melissa Barr, and Amelia Hatfield explain their roles at Inaphaea and their ambitious plans for the company’s future.

World Organoid Research Day

Dr Andrew Carnegie was pleased to attend Organoid Spheroid.com’s conference this week at the Wellcome Genome Campus. Hosted by ELRIG UK, this event brought together experts from across the industry to discuss leading research studies and the technologies addressing the ever-changing needs across early-stage discovery through screening and toxicology to the clinic.

Highlights for Andrew included presentations looking at use of organoids across the following areas:

  • Liver regeneration – Professor Luc van der Laan from the Erasmus MC Transplant Institute, University Medical Center
  • Musculoskeletal tissue healing – Dr Johanna Bolander, Assistant Professor, BIH Center for Regenerative Therapies at Charite Univeristatsmedizin and IMEC
  • Brain development – Dr Laura Pellegrini, Group Leader, The Medical Research Council Centre for Neuro­developmental Disorders, KCL
  • Anti-cancer virotherapies – Dr Luned Badder, University of Cardiff

Cancer was a strong theme of the event, with presentations from Professor Marianna Kruithof-de Julio, Head of Research/Director Organoid Core, University of Bern, on bladder cancer organoids, and Mr Vittorio Barbè, Senior Laboratory Research Scientist, The Francis Crick Institute, on the use of organoids in the lung cancer space.

Biotechgate Digital Partnering event

Between 26 Feb and 1 March, Andrew also attended Biotechgate’s Digital Partnering event, which provided a great opportunity to establish relationships with organisations across the global biotech and pharma sectors. We secured several meetings, presented our products and services to interested parties, and had some introductory discussions around possible collaborations.

This March, you can meet Andrew at the following events: