Author: Biotech Express

In the inspiring presence of Chief Minister Shri Bhupendra Patel in Gandhinagar on Wednesday, July 19th, the stakeholders of the Biotechnology Policy accomplished a remarkable feat by concluding MoUs worth ₹2000 crore in a single day for new investments in the state’s biotechnology sector. The MoU was signed by Science Technology Secretary Shri Vijay Nehra on behalf of the State Government. Approximately 3,000 jobs are set to be created in the upcoming biotech industries as a result of this MoU. It was signed by a total of 15 companies, with 13 from Gujarat, and one from Maharashtra and one from…

Pune-based Enzene Biosciences  announced that it has launched Cetuximab as the first biosimilar to cancer. Sold under the brand name Erbitux, Cetuximab is a therapeutic chimeric monoclonal antibody that is used as a targeted therapy for metastatic colorectal Cancer (mCRC) and cancer of the head and neck, with eight weeks of treatment costing about $30,000 for a single patient. However, after past patent expiry, several companies were in the race to develop “Cetuximab’s biosimilar in order to bring down the costs of treatment. Enzene Biosciences has earned the distinction of being the first company to achieve this goal, thereby leading…

Ambiq®, a technology leader in ultra-low power semiconductor products and solutions, introduces the Apollo4 Lite and Apollo4 Blue Lite SoC to its expanding portfolio of SoCs for IoT endpoint devices, especially the remote monitoring products of the healthcare sector. This announcement follows Ambiq’s release of its Heart Kit™, an optimized open-source AI model utilizing multi-head neural networks (MH-NNs) to enable a variety of real-time heart-monitoring applications. The Apollo4 Lite and Blue Lite product line is the latest generation system processor solutions built upon Ambiq’s proprietary Subthreshold Power-Optimized Technology (SPOT®) platform, enabling new features while reducing devices’ overall system power consumption…

BMJ Open has retracted a paper describing a study in which people with diabetes will be switched from cigarettes to vaping after the journal learned – late in the process of publication – that the authors were indirectly funded by the tobacco company, Philip Morris International. The paper, “International randomised controlled trial evaluating metabolic syndrome in type 2 diabetic cigarette smokers following switching to combustion-free nicotine delivery systems: the DIASMOKE protocol,” was originally published on April 1, 2021. Its retraction notice, dated June 20, 2023, reads: This article has been retracted by the journal and publisher following a post-publication review…

Scientists at Equine Production Campus, ICAR-National Research Centre on Equines, Bikaner (Rajasthan) produced a horse foal using Embryo transfer technology. In Embryo transfer technology, a fertilized embryo at the Blastocyst stage (Day 7.5 after insemination) was collected from the donor mare and successfully transferred recipient (surrogate) mother. The transfer of a blastocyst-stage embryo to a surrogate mother led to the birth of a filly foal with a normal birth weight of 23.0 kg, on Friday, 19th May 2023. The newly born foal is named ‘Raj-Prathama’. The population of the Marwari horse breed are declining at a faster pace (Livestock Census,…

By Kamal Pratap Singh, Managing Editor, Biotech Express, E-mail- kamal9871@gmail.com On May 10, 2023, The Royal Society, the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world announced its elected Fellows for 2023 (https://royalsociety.org/news/2023/05/new-fellows-2023/). Prof Rajeev K Varshney is the only Indian scientist elected as FRS in the year 2023. Currently, Professor Rajeev Varshney, is with Murdoch University (Australia) as Director of the Centre for Crop & Food Innovation; Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre; and International Chair in Agriculture & Food Security. This impressive induction will make Prof. Varshney the fourth Indian agricultural research scientist to receive this fellowship in…

On Sunday, 14th May, FABA in association with WTC Shamshabad, BIRAC, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning and IFCAI held the first event of a recurring conference series on Antimicrobial Resistance Stewardship. The series aims to educate life science students and medical professionals on the importance of raising awareness of Antimicrobial resistance and strategies to tackle it. Final year MBBS student, Jithin Reddy Vennapusa, kicked the event off with a brief introduction of Antimicrobial stewardship and its strategies in a healthcare setting. He also introduced the various strategies followed by WHO and Government of India to overcome the challenges…

COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a “global health emergency”, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The announcement on Friday came more than three years after the United Nations health agency declared its highest level of alert over the devastating virus, which triggered lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions of people worldwide. “Yesterday, the Emergency Committee met for the 15th time and recommended to me that I declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “I’ve accepted that advice. It’s, therefore, with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a…

The retraction notices, issued in late March by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in the U.K., all state that: The authors informed the Editor that the characterization of the original samples was outsourced, and they do not have the original raw data for the published results. Given the significance of the concerns about the validity of the data, and the lack of raw data, the findings presented in this paper are not reliable. The corresponding author, Dhanaraj Gopi of Periyar University in Tamil Nadu, had several papers flagged on PubPeer starting in 2019, including some that have not been…

A tweet from the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has inflicted fresh wounds on research scholars all over India. Yesterday, May 10, the DST mentioned it was working on the scholars’ demands and would resolve the matter soon, asking them to have patience. Already frustrated over the department’s lacklustre response to their previous demonstrations, the scholars now plan protests. Scholars have three principal demands: 1. Regular disbursement of fellowships As of now, scholars receive their fellowships once every 3-6 months, which makes it difficult for them to focus on research, said Dr Vishwakarma. “One has to constantly worry about…