Sharing Life Sciences Innovations
Acquisitions of Biotech companies: a good or a bad thing?
When on the 8th January 2018 the news travelled that Novo Nordisk made a €2.6bn bid for Belgium’s Ablynx, only to be leapfrogged a few weeks later by the € 3.9bn Sanofi bid, we immediately picture…
How to build a “European Amgen”
There are still very few large European biotech companies to compete with the Amgens and Gileads of the world. Only a handful of European biotech companies have managed to stay independent, grow,…
Big data, big produce – Trends in agri-biotech
In the last few decades, with the introduction of GMOs, the agricultural industry was turned upside down. Major consolidations between companies took place, while sustainability and big data have …
Leveraging terabytes of single cell data
Yvan Saeys is a young professor at VIB-UGent. As the group leader of the department of Data Mining and Modeling for Biomedicine he focuses on developing computational models for single cell analys…
Stem cell patch restores vision to the blind
A stem cell patch has successfully restored sight to two blind patients in the UK. The Phase I trial is the first of its kind to use a whole engineered piece of tissue to treat vision impairment. …
Two genes work together to trigger childhood leukemia
Two known cancer-causing genes, HOXA9 and JAK3/STAT5, are cooperating to trigger acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a common form of childhood cancer. Although both genes were already known to play a s…
From Academia to Industry: growing in new directions
What does it mean to “be a scientist”? People generally have a very academia-centric view: scientists do research, write grants and churn out papers. Yet there are many ways to work in a scientifi…
Is innovation killing the pharmaceutical industry?
In the past few years, the speed at which new drugs have been coming to the market has accelerated significantly [1]. This means there is a lot more competition than before, greatly affecting the …
Confo Therapeutics is awarded a EUR 1M grant to increase its screening capabilities
Confo Therapeutics announced today that it has received a €1 million grant from the Flemish Government through Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO). The grant will be used to support the…
Sanofi acquires Ablynx for €3.9 billion
Sanofi and Ablynx entered into a definitive agreement under which Sanofi will offer to acquire all of the outstanding ordinary shares, including shares represented by American Depositary Shares (A…
Nominations open for Dr. Paul Janssen Award
Have you ever heard from the Dr. Paul Janssen award? It's an acknowledgement for biomedical research almost as important as a Nobel Prize. A trophy sculpture, along with $200,000 cash, will go to …
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Upcoming events
Medical Biotechnology
Ghent, Belgium
Thu 24 May 2018 - Fri 25 May 2018
24 May 09:00
- 25 May 17:00
“New research issues in the life sciences require new research tools,” said Nico Callewaert of the VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology and organizing committee member of this conferenc…
CTLS2018@VIB
Ghent, Belgium
Sun 01 Jul 2018 - Wed 04 Jul 2018
01 Jul 09:00
- 04 Jul 17:00
Core Technologies For Life Sciences After two successful editions of the CTLS conference (at Institut Pasteur, Paris in 2014 and at EMBL, Heidelberg in 2016), VIB is honoured to organize …
Structural Dynamics in Cellular Communication (2nd edition)
Brussels, Belgium
Thu 20 Sep 2018 - Fri 21 Sep 2018
20 Sep 09:00
- 21 Sep 17:00
After a successful first edition in January 2015, with a great audience and speakers such as Nobel Prize winner Ada Yonath, we are honored to announce a second edition. This conference wi…
