Highlighting innovation

Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), together with carbon monoxide (CO), methanol (CH3OH), and formate (HCOOH), form a class of molecules classified as one-carbon (C1) compounds. From a fundamental point of view, carbon is a necessary building block for many commonplace goods, such as biofuels, medicines, and packaging materials. It has been argued that a circular bioeconomy should eliminate, effectively utilise, and sequester more carbon than it emits into the atmosphere.

George William Ssendagala

September 25, 2023

Synthetic biology has grown tremendously popular in recent years, following successes from the realms of gene therapies to sustainable agriculture and much more. Our next guest on the SEC series truly embodies the ‘dogma breaking’ aspect of synthetic biology, targeting the inside of our cells through their start-up NanoSyrinx.

Charles Leach

September 15, 2023

‍London, September 2023 - The Innovators Club, a network accelerator programme run by the non-profit Science Entrepreneur Club (SEC), has today announced its fourth cohort welcoming six start-ups innovating across the life sciences.

September 14, 2023

The first period tracking app was released in 2013, and approximately 100 million people use a period tracking app today. With this growth, over 10 years, period tracking apps seem like an exponential success. Yet, every month, around 1.8 billion people in the global population menstruate, suggesting there is a side of the market that is currently being unfulfilled.

Natasha Barrow

May 31, 2023

Currently based at the University of Sheffield in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department, Evolutor was created following the amazing work of Prof. Tuck Seng Wong and Dr Kang Lan Tee, through which CEO, Joe Price, envisioned the evolutionary microbe development company: Evolutor. Evolutor’s Accelerated Evolution Platform allows them to use the power of adaptive evolution to create improved microbes for industrial usage. With this platform, their ambition is to build the world’s first evolutionary bio-foundry...

April 21, 2023

Unaffordable, imprecise, and an untimely disease diagnosis undermines the global healthcare system, contributing to increased morbidity and mortality. The rising prevalence of diseases such as cancer and neurological disorders need a timely diagnosis for better management. New drug therapies for chronic diseases are needed and being developed, but currently, the cost of development through screening and trials of compounds is prohibitive, restricting patient access. Through their novel technology, ChronosDx is developing a promising bioassay to circumvent these challenges.

George William Ssendagala

March 23, 2023

Proteins are essential across many aspects of our lives, from food and therapeutics, to the industrial enzymes currently in use to degrade plastics and other undesirable climate-damaging products out there. Eden Bio was founded in 2022 with the vision of using machine learning to optimise how these proteins get produced. Using their suite of computational and wet-lab tools, the team quickly screen the many possible genetic modifications that can be made to fungal strains to improve how much protein the strain can produce, helping their customers improve their yield and get their exciting new protein products to market quicker.

Aonghus Topham

February 27, 2023

Apeikon Therapeutics has developed a revolutionary new technology for cancer treatment. As a spin-out company, Apeikon was born out of the significant discoveries made over the last 14 years at King’s College London by Dr Maya Thanou. Apeikon Therapeutics is working on a novel technology that will substantially improve the efficacy and reduce the side effects of cancer drugs through directed activation of drug delivery.

February 23, 2023

With recent progress in developing tools that can manipulate genetic material, the concept of ‘Synthetic Biology’ has rapidly evolved and applies the principles of engineering to the world of biotechnology. Early research focussed on the alteration of simple pathways, but now the creation of entirely synthetic microorganisms is possible. Genetic modification has often been a controversial issue in the context of our food systems, but employing new technologies which introduce beneficial properties to our food may help to pave a new way forward for the debate in this area.

January 25, 2023

Throughout this series, we’ll be focusing onto antibiotics and the problem associated with antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can occur when microorganisms gain mechanistic advantages which allow them to survive exposure to therapeutic agents such as antibiotics, antifungals, or antivirals. There are many ways microbes can obtain resistance, such as genetic mutations and the transfer of genes, but what proliferates and pushes resistance to happen more rapidly are selective pressures.

January 12, 2023