Germitec SA has raised €11 million (US$11.6 million) to finance commercial scale-up, as it prepares to submit for FDA 510k approval of its ultrasound probe disinfection system.

Type 2 diabetes is known to involve many different underlying mechanisms, but the considerable heterogeneity in the phenotype is mostly ignored in how it is treated. Now, researchers at University of Dundee, U.K., have developed a method for visualizing this heterogeneity and shown how the risks of complications, such as chronic kidney disease or peripheral neuropathy, differ by phenotypes.

First results from the U.K. Cov-Boost trial, looking at responses to a fourth dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, show that antibody levels increase more than after the third dose, confirming the precautionary move to give the most vulnerable a second COVID-19 booster in advance of immune response data being available.

If it is now acknowledged the gut microbiota plays a role in the pathophysiology of depression, the specific biochemical mechanisms underlying this connection are hard to unpick and poorly understood.

Orthoson Ltd. closed a £8.9 million (US$11.1 million) oversubscribed series A, which will be devoted to completing preparations for its ultrasound/hydrogel combination treatment for repairing degenerated spinal discs to start phase I clinical trials.

Engimmune Therapeutics AG has raised CHF15.5 million (US$16.7 million) in a seed round, as it prepares to address efficacy and safety shortcomings that currently constrain T-cell receptor and soluble TCR cancer therapies. The Basel, Switzerland-based company’s technology brings together genome editing, functional screening, deep mutational sequencing and machine learning, to engineer synthetic T-cell receptors that are highly specific to a chosen tumor antigen, increasing affinity and safety and avoiding off-target effects.

Researchers have uncovered a new pathway via which cancer cells evade the effects of radiation by deploying self-inflicted – but reversible – DNA breaks to stop the cell cycle and ensure their survival. The lesions are caused by caspase-activated DNase (CAD), an enzyme involved in DNA fragmentation during cell death. In response to radiation, tumor cells activate CAD, causing genome-wide DNA breaks at sites involved in DNA repair.

Orphalan SA is laying the ground for a 2023 U.S. launch of Cuvrior for the treatment of Wilson’s disease, following FDA approval of the copper chelating drug. Cuvrior (trientine tetrahydrochloride) is a new salt of trientine that was designed to have superior properties to Syprine (trientine hydrochloride) from Bausch Health Companies Inc. and Cufence from Univar Solutions BV, which are approved as second-line treatments for the rare inherited copper transport disorder, in the U.S. and EU respectively.

Researchers have uncovered a new pathway via which cancer cells evade the effects of radiation by deploying self-inflicted – but reversible – DNA breaks to stop the cell cycle and ensure their survival.

Omass Therapeutics Ltd. has raised £75.5 million (US$94.6 million) in a series B round, as it continues to advance five small-molecule programs against previously intractable membrane-bound targets to the clinic.