MorphoSys buys Lanthio Pharma's lanthipeptide technology

MorphoSys AG, a leading biotechnology companies focusing on fully human antibodies, and Lanthio Pharma, a privately held drug discovery company, announced the acquisition of Lanthio Pharma's lanthipeptide technology, which will be used for drug discovery by MorphoSys.

The acquisition was triggered by MorphoSys exercising an option within an ongoing collaboration and option agreement between the two companies. By exercising the option, MorphoSys takes over the lanthipeptide technology and all related intellectual property. Lanthio Pharma will continue to focus on building its portfolio of selected lanthipeptide drugs and will participate financially in MorphoSys's exploitation of the technology. Financial details were not disclosed.

"Lanthipeptides can become a complementary addition to our therapeutic antibody pipeline and will add more diversity to our drug discovery and development approaches," commented Dr. Marlies Sproll, chief scientific officer of MorphoSys AG. "The decision to acquire this technology was made following a feasibility study to establish high quality and diverse lanthipeptide-based libraries. This brings us closer to adding members of this class of stabilized peptides to our drug portfolio."

As part of its innovation capital initiative, MorphoSys entered a collaboration and option agreement with Lanthio Pharma in November 2012, which included an equity investment as part of the company's Series A financing round.

Application and Pharma industry condition

Detecting metal contamination plays an important role in final quality check for food safety or process safety. Though the basic technology remains same, today metal detection technology has risen to newer heights in meeting the challenges. It is of prime importance that the right metal detector is selected based on right application and industry conditions.

The role of metal detection and validation for quality checks has now gained prominence than at any other time. Especially the highly regulated pharmaceutical sector which has the responsibility of manufacturing lifesaving drugs needs to be vigilant with its production and packing lines to ensure quality, contamination free and safe drugs.

At present the metal detectors manufacturers for pharmaceutical industry are developing equipment with most advanced features embedded in them such as, ultra high sensitivity to all metals, ease of setting, validation stamping, on-line production data validation and comprehensive service and application support all available in them.

Metal contamination gets generated accidentally during various stages of automated process of the manufacturing. While identifying and eliminating metal is important , equally important is to identify the source of the contamination. Though it would be practically impossible to install metal detector at each and every stage of manufacturing, it should be considered a must for in-process identification of the source of such metal contamination.

India, China takes lead in Research

The softpower of the globe which was the preserve of the West of centuries is fast shifting to the East as emerging nations led by India and China are enhancing their science, education and technology policies says a research.

According to sturdy the country has seen whopping 146 per cent increase in its research output in the past decade alone, taking its globe share to 3.6 percent.

 Over the past decade the country has increased its scientific research output by a whopping 146 per cent and  account for 3.6 per cent of the total world share of researches increased of its world share by 1.1 percentage .

According to the report the country produced twice a many published research papers in 2012.  The study on G20 nations  compared the research and innovation land scape of the each nations and has found that the US and European Union have dropped in science and innovation impact, while Australia, China, India, France and Britain have gained influence.

European Chemicals industry

This came just two weeks after the American Chemistry Council (ACC) announced that potential US chemicals industry investment linked to plentiful and affordable natural gas and natural gas liquids from shale formations has topped $100 billion from 148 projects. More than half comes from non-US companies.

Cited textiles as an industry that has almost entirely left Europe due to cheaper Asian competition. Warned that chemicals could “go the same way”, despite being a $1 trillion industry with over 1 million direct and 5 million indirect jobs and one that is essential to the competitive future of many other European industries.

Strategically, and economically, no large economy should abandon its chemical industry. But Europe seems agnostic about the fate of European chemicals. Whilst intensely technical as an industry, and one of the reasons historically that Europe has been so successful, technology alone will not save it.

 
Competitive energy and feedstock costs, he continued, are crucial. Currently gas is three times more expensive in Europe than the US and electricity 50% higher. Both the US and the Middle East, where huge expansions in petrochemicals are being announced, have much cheaper feed stocks. China is building relentlessly and will start to export more soon, once it has reached self-sufficiency.
 
If the EU wants to raise industry’s contribution to EU GDP to as much as 20% by 2020, industry should not be saddled with additional policy costs. The chemicals industry has already achieved a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emission reductions and could do more still.

In Germany, the chemicals, oil and gas industries are urging a rethink of the Energiewende, a policy that systematically favours renewable energy and is phasing out nuclear power in response to the Fukushima disaster in 2011. This was based on a study by IHS which said that the policy had led to a rise in energy prices, reduced progress on energy efficiency and led to greater consumption of coal – mostly imported – and a rise in CO2 emissions. To stay competitive, Germany needs to develop its shale gas reserves and cut targets for offshore wind power.

The German chemicals industry is also facing plans from the EC that would require Germany to phase out special exemptions from this legislation that gives rebates worth about €500 billion/year by 18 December.