Category: Our News

Challenge: Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is the leading cause of cardiovascular and renal diseases. Although many treatments are available, they only partially reduce the risk of serious complications in diabetic patients. As a first step towards reducing diabetes-related morbidity and mortality, the team had developed a Polygenic Risk Score (PRS) in T2D Caucasian patients that combines data on sex, age of onset and diabetes duration to better predict risks of…

Challenge: The low efficacy of treatment is partially due to the heterogeneity of disease and population. Individuals do not respond the same way to treatment and can have very different clinical trajectories that are difficult to predict. In order to improve treatment efficacy, precision medicine approaches need to be considered. A refined selection of the population…

Challenge: Diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration are the leading causes of blindness in working age and elderly populations. While anti-VEGFs revolutionized treatment of retinal vasculopathies, currently available drugs can cause neuronal degeneration. Besides, over 40% of patients respond poorly to these treatments, leaving patients with no alternative, ultimately leading them to blindness. There is…

Challenge: Studies of intracellular protein-protein interactions (PPI) is emerging as an important drug discovery tool. Since many relevant targets can only be affected by drugs candidates in living cells, specific screening methods are implemented using sophisticated microscopy systems. A way to measure these interactions in cellulo is through the implementation of Förster Resonance Energy Transfer…

Challenge: Somatic mutations are de novo non-inherited mutations which can be passed down to other cells through the course of cell division. Their role has been well-established in cancer. However, the presence of somatic mutations in non-malignant disease has never been explored since it is unlikely that a single point mutation would be sufficient to cause disease.…

Challenge: The fight against cancer, infectious diseases and chronic disorders has been significantly advanced because of the development of effective immunotherapies, vaccines and immunomodulatory drugs. New pre-clinical tools to enable this new active field of drug discovery are needed further upstream in the discovery process. More functional and physiologically relevant readouts are necessary to address…

Challenge: Despite the enormous benefits that traditional vaccines have brought to human health in the last century, preventable diseases continue to claim millions of lives each year. New vaccine technologies that offer speed and versatility in production would have significant impact. The emergence of technologies based on Virus-Like Particles (VLPs) has paved the way for…

Challenge: Infection with herpes viruses is associated with several immunodeficient human diseases including the development of cancers. Patients receiving organ transplants are particularly sensitive to such infections. These patients are treated with antiviral agents; however, approved drugs are often associated with severe side effects and the development of resistance can compromise therapy. There is thus…

Challenge: Antibiotics represent some of the most important drugs available to modern medicine because they can often treat bacterial infections that would otherwise pose a serious health threat. However, there is currently a lack of new antibiotic development by the industry due to reduced economic incentives as well as challenging scientific and regulatory requirements. To…

Challenge: Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body immune system attacks its own tissues, causing inflammation and tissue damage. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is the most common type. It affects 1/1000 individuals, mostly women. In healthy people, more than 50 billion cells die daily as part of a normal biological mechanism: replacing…