#98 - Synthetic sperm, smart baby scans and survival shots
The coffee break biotech roundup, by SomX.
Hello, my fellow pipette pioneers,
This week: a skin-worn ultrasound keeps watch over babies in the womb, Oxford scientists scramble to ready an Ebola jab as an outbreak rages, Eli Lilly goes on a vaccine shopping spree, US lawmakers eye Chinese biotech deals with fresh suspicion, a new solid tumour treatment treats its first patient, and a start-up reckons it can grow sperm in a lab.
Mind the petri dish!
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Discover 🔍
👶 Scientists create wearable ultrasound to continuously monitor babies in womb (The Guardian): A new skin-worn device could give doctors a continuous, real-time view of foetal health, rather than relying on occasional snapshots during clinic visits. Where current methods rely on intermittent scans or imprecise continuous monitoring, the “UPatch” tracks foetal heart rate and blood flow as the baby moves about. Early trials in the US and UK show it matches traditional ultrasound accuracy.
Our take: Continuous monitoring could unlock far deeper understanding of why some babies survive in the womb and others don’t – and the researchers are clear that preventing stillbirth is the ambition. In one case, the patch flagged severe growth restriction in a pre-eclamptic patient, prompting a life-saving early C-section. The potential is particularly significant in low-resource settings, where repeated clinic scans and skilled operators are hard to come by.
💉 UK scientists developing Ebola vaccine that could be ready for trials in months (BBC News): Oxford scientists are racing to adapt their Covid-era vaccine platform for a rare but deadly Ebola strain now driving an emergency outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The experimental Bundibugyo jab could reach clinical trials within two to three months, though plenty of uncertainty remains. Should it work, it would be deployed through ring vaccination, targeting close contacts and frontline health workers.
Our take: The harder problem here is logistics, not immunology. A Bundibugyo response leans on spotting cases quickly through community surveillance, tracing complex contact networks to break transmission, and getting jabs to remote settings where cold-chain kit and reliable transport are frequently nowhere to be found. A clever vaccine counts for little if the machinery meant to deliver it buckles under the pressure of an escalating epidemic.
💰 Eli Lilly to buy three small vaccine developers (STAT): Eli Lilly has snapped up three early- and mid-stage vaccine developers in deals worth up to nearly $4B, each pairing an upfront payment with milestones tied to clinical and regulatory progress. Curevo brings a shingles jab designed to improve on the tolerability of GSK’s Shingrix, LimmaTech a Staphylococcus aureus vaccine with surgical infection prevention in mind, and Vaccine Company an Epstein-Barr virus candidate linked to long-term risk reduction for multiple sclerosis and several cancers.
Our take: The targets are vaccines against pathogens known to trigger chronic complications downstream – shingles with stroke risk, EBV with multiple sclerosis and cancer. That framing nudges Lilly beyond straightforward prevention into disease modification territory, and helps make the commercial case at a time of broader pressure on vaccine manufacturers. The buys fold neatly into a GLP-1-funded acquisition spree that has now reached oncology, autoimmune disease, sleep disorders, and infectious disease in the space of a year.
🧬 Ori Biotech and ImmuXell announce strategic partnership and dose first patient (BioSpace): The first patient has been dosed in an investigator-initiated trial targeting KRAS G12V-mutated solid tumours, including colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, and lung cancer. Shanghai-based ImmuXell partnered with Ori Biotech, using their IRO® platform to manufacture the TCR-T cell therapy in just four months.
Our take: For cancers with no good treatment options, speed to patients is everything – and cell therapy manufacturing has historically been slow, expensive, and difficult to scale. IRO® is designed to eliminate those tradeoffs: speed without sacrificing quality, scale without sacrificing cost. If it delivers on that promise more broadly, the implications for patient access go well beyond this trial.
🇨🇳 As calls for COINS Act expansion grow, will new rules sweep up China biotech licensing? (Fierce Biotech): As American biopharma increasingly looks to China for faster, cheaper innovation, some US policymakers want biotechnology folded into the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security (COINS) Act, which restricts outbound investment in sensitive sectors. Supporters argue intervention is needed to protect domestic innovation and competitiveness.
Our take: This change could bring fresh scrutiny to licensing deals, NewCo structures, and joint ventures with Chinese assets – potentially slowing dealmaking and pushing up costs. Chinese biotech assets have become attractive partly because they can offer strong clinical data, faster development timelines and lower costs than Western assets. But if every deal starts carrying extra legal review, government notification and political risk, the economics begin to change.
And finally…
🍆 Will lab-grown sperm let infertile men have children of their own? (The New Scientist): A US start-up is claiming it can grow sperm in the lab for men who produce none of their own. Paterna Biosciences says it can take stem cells from the testes and coax them into sperm cells, potentially opening a fresh route to biological fatherhood. The unmet need is real enough, particularly for men who produce no sperm and have precious few options as things stand.
Our take: This is not a blanket fix for male infertility. Even if Paterna can do what it claims, patients would still need viable stem cells in the testes to harvest in the first place. For men whose infertility stems from genetic defects, lab-grown sperm may therefore need pairing with gene editing – which raises the prospect of gene-edited children, one of bioethics’ most contested territories.
Tune in 🎧
🤑 $250M VC explains women’s health market: endometriosis & PCOS: This episode explores why conditions like endometriosis and PCOS remain underdiagnosed and underfunded, despite the growing investor interest in femtech.
🧑🔬 From pipettes to python: How to break into computational biology: Dean Lee shares how he built credibility from a bench science background; learned scRNA-seq analysis on the side; and turned self-directed projects, reproducibility work, and public data into a real path into comp bio.
💊 Rare disease drug commercialisation with Zevra Therapeutics’ Neil McFarlane: Zevra’s CEO explores building a focused rare disease company through acquisitions, scaling commercialisation, partnering with patient advocacy groups, and using AI to identify undiagnosed patients.
Apply ✍️
🤝 External Partner Manager, Bristol Myers Squibb: Want to sit at the intersection of science, strategy, and supplier management? You’ll lead relationships with CDMOs, drive joint governance and performance via VDOTs, and translate technical development needs into commercial agreements.
🧫 Biotechnologist, Lonza: Ready to build hands-on GMP manufacturing experience from the ground up? You’ll support production at Lonza’s Slough facility, learn key quality systems like deviations and change control, and help keep manufacturing safe, compliant, and on schedule.
🧪 Field Application Specialist - Downstream Bioprocessing, Merck: Fancy turning DSP expertise into commercial impact? You'll support customers across the UK and Ireland from pre-sales to implementation, partnering with commercial and MSAT teams to spot growth opportunities and shape strategy.
RSVP 📆
🖥️ 08–12.06 | London Tech Week | London, UK: Europe’s premier tech gathering – drawing innovators, investors and enterprise leaders to hear from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Isomorphic Labs and the UK government on what’s next in tech.
🔬 10–12.06 | BioInference 2026 | St Andrews, UK: A three-day academic conference at Scotland’s oldest university, bringing together statisticians and biologists to tackle inference problems across epidemiology, genomics, spatial omics, and mathematical biology.
🤑 15.06 | Capital For Cures Liquidity Event – Royalty Financing: Amsterdam, Netherlands: This networking and panel event brings together investors, family offices and biotech innovators to discuss royalty financing, with a focus on how non-dilutive capital can fund breakthroughs while preserving long-term value.
🩺 15–18.06 | HLTH Europe 2026 | Amsterdam, Netherlands: Europe’s biggest healthcare innovation gathering hauls 5,000+ leaders to Amsterdam, with one in three at C-suite level, to thrash out the continent’s particular healthcare headaches and opportunities.
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