Ex-Novartis Chief Joins uBiome to Help Launch Discovery and Development Business
uBiome announced on 9/21/18 that the company will leverage its deep knowledge of the microbiome and expand upon its current portfolio of commercially available microbiome tests into drug discovery, development, and commercialization. In conjunction with its expansion into therapeutics, the company has appointed Joseph Jimenez, the former CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, to its board of directors, and opened its new therapeutics headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, both to support the Company’s new drug discovery and development efforts.
“Since uBiome’s founding in 2012, we have gained incredible insights into the human microbiome through successful commercialization of our existing products, SmartGut™, SmartJane™, and Explorer™, as well as new products under development. Using proprietary machine learning and other computational techniques, we have mined our database to discover new therapeutic targets, with an initial focus on oncology, autoimmune disorders, obesity, and metabolic disorders. Our expansion into therapeutics does not involve sale of customer data, but rather a focus on intellectual property derived from our deep microbiome database,” said Jessica Richman, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of uBiome. “Joe Jimenez brings an indisputable record of success in pharmaceutical drug discovery and development. He will further advance the success of uBiome’s mission to transform research into useful products based on the microbiome.”
Dr. Nicholas Monsul – Chairman/Founder of Quorum Innovations will delivered a key address to the Annual Microbiome Summit on 9/20/18 in Vienna, Austria. Dr. Monsul demonstrated the capabilities to modulate the skin microbiota and effectively restore microbiome ecology by stimulating the innate immune response. He presented how Quorum has developed an effective drug platform that has delivered microbiome therapeutics that modulate the skin microbiome by increasing the growth of commensal bacteria while inhibiting the growth of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
SkinBio Therapeutics Begins Human Study
SkinBioTherapeutics plc (AIM: SBTX, the "Company"), a life science company focused on skin health, confirms that it has commenced its human study being carried out on its SkinBiotix technology.
There are three elements to the human study: the first, already underway, is to assess skin irritancy; the second, due to commence on 20 September 2018, is to assess moisturisation potential; and the third is to assess the technology's impact on the barrier function. This third element of the study, for which the Company has now received final ethics approval, has been rescheduled to commence in November due to capacity issues within the clinical research organisation.
Dr Cath O'Neill, CEO of SkinBioTherapeutics, commented:
"I am delighted that we now have all three aspects of our human study scheduled. Data from the two initial tests is expected in October 2018, and data from the third, larger test, is expected in Q4 2018 and Q1 2019. We hope that these results will provide additional proof of the SkinBiotix technology's efficacy and enable us to continue to pursue commercial discussions".