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Hello. Welcome to BioFocus, a life science news and insights platform bringing you updates across biotech, pharma, bioprocessing, health, and sustainability. Hello. Welcome to BioFocus. Explore the latest updates from the life science industry. Read more Popular Content. HEALTH A New Device Could Improve How Progesterone is Delivered in Early Pregnancy A first-in-human trial for a tampon-like intravaginal drug delivery platform arrives at a moment when England's newly published Women's Health Strategy is calling for exactly this kind of patient-centred innovation. Featured Articles. PHARMA AI in Science Writing and the Imitation of Understanding Read More PHARMA Pharma & Biotech Quality Summit 2026 Read More BIOPROCESSING FUJIFILM Biotechnologies Launches UK’s Largest Single-Use Biomanufacturing Facility Read More BIOTECH Basecamp Research Launches the Trillion Gene Atlas Read More PHARMA Inside Nxera Pharma’s Next-Generation Biopharma Model Read More HEALTH Killing Mosquitoes With the Smell of Flowers Read More BIOTECH UK Biotech Cyclana Bio is Trying to Understand Endometriosis From the Tissue Up and it's Just Recruited its First Patients Read More SUSTAINABILITY Engineering Crops From the Inside Out Read More BIOTECH PRISM ALS Sets Out to Improve ALS/MND Drug Discovery Read More Latest News. 20th May, 2026 01. UK Biotech Cyclana Bio is Trying to Understand Endometriosis From the Tissue Up and it's Just Recruited its First Patients Cyclana Bio's PEMP study has received NHS ethics approval and begun enrolling women at two UK hospitals. If its tissue-first approach to drug discovery pays off, it could start answering questions that have gone unanswered for decades. Read More 11th May, 2026 02. A New Device Could Improve How Progesterone is Delivered in Early Pregnancy A first-in-human trial for a tampon-like intravaginal drug delivery platform arrives at a moment when England's newly published Women's Health Strategy is calling for exactly this kind of patient-centred innovation. Read More 5th May, 2026 03. Qureight Appoints Board to Advance AI Imaging for Pulmonary Hypertension Trials Cambridge-based imaging CRO brings together seven global experts to guide development of non-invasive AI endpoints. Read More 28th April, 2026 04. AviadoBio Bets on Blood-Brain Barrier Technology in Push for One-Time Alzheimer's Treatment A licensing deal with Apertura Gene Therapy gives the London-based biotech a clinically validated delivery system to pair with its gene-silencing platform, but the hard work is still ahead. Read More Event Spotlight. Explore the key upcoming industry events. Discover more Editor's Selects. AI in Science Writing and the Imitation of Understanding 01. Read more First Human Egg ‘Rejuvenation’ Offers Hope for Older IVF Patients 02. Read more A Simple Pad Could Transform Cervical Cancer Screening 03. Read more A New Device Could Improve How Progesterone is Delivered in Early Pregnancy 04. Read more Stay up-to-date. Connect with BioFocus on LinkedIn or subscribe to our mailing list. Mail

Cyclana Bio's PEMP study has received NHS ethics approval and begun enrolling women at two UK hospitals. If its tissue-first approach to drug discovery pays off, it could start answering questions that have gone unanswered for decades. < Back UK Biotech Cyclana Bio is Trying to Understand Endometriosis From the Tissue Up, and it's Just Recruited its First Patients Cyclana Bio's PEMP study has received NHS ethics approval and begun enrolling women at two UK hospitals. If its tissue-first approach to drug discovery pays off, it could start answering questions that have gone unanswered for decades. Endometriosis affects an estimated 10% of reproductive age women worldwide . It is painful, progressive, and despite its prevalence, still poorly understood. The average time from a woman's first GP appointment with symptoms to a confirmed diagnosis is, according to Endometriosis UK, around nine years and four months. That figure has barely moved in years, not because clinicians aren't trying, but because the underlying biology of the condition remains unresolved. There are few reliable drug targets, limited treatment options beyond hormonal suppression or surgery, and almost no tools to distinguish between patients who will respond to one intervention versus another. Cyclana Bio is working to fill some of these gaps. It’s a Cambridge-based biotechnology company with a specific thesis: that the reason drug discovery in endometriosis has stalled is that it has largely looked in the wrong places. The company believes that focusing on the tissue level, rather than the intracellular mechanisms that have dominated research to date, may reveal the shared causal mechanisms the field has been searching for. On 19 May 2026, Cyclana Bio announced that it had received Health Research Authority and Research Ethics Committee approval for PEMP (Predicting Endometriosis Mechanisms and Populations), which is a 500-patient clinical observational study. First patients have already been recruited at Peterborough City Hospital, with the Rosie Hospital in Cambridge now also enrolling participants. What the PEMP study is actually trying to find out The design of the PEMP study reflects the depth of the unknowns Cyclana Bio is working against. Researchers will collect biopsies and menstrual fluid from both healthy women and those with endometriosis, using the donated material to build physiologically relevant 3D models of the disease in vitro. These models are intended to reveal the tissue-level dynamics, the structural and cellular behaviour, that distinguish endometriotic tissue from healthy tissue. A particular focus is the extracellular matrix, the scaffolding of proteins and molecules surrounding cells that governs how tissue forms, remodels, and responds to signals. Cyclana Bio says it has already confirmed the ECM's involvement in endometriosis. The PEMP data should tell the company whether that involvement points to a single, shared causal mechanism - one amenable to a universal treatment - or whether endometriosis is in practice several diseases wearing the same name, each requiring a different therapeutic approach. Both outcomes would be valuable. A shared mechanism would create a tractable drug target at significant scale. A stratified picture would explain why so many treatments have underperformed in unselected patient populations, and point toward precision medicine approaches that have a realistic chance of working. M. Saikat Banerjee, Chief Investigator at the Rosie Hospital, described the clinical context plainly. "Endometriosis is sadly a common condition and yet we know so little, and as a result women's suffering is further prolonged and treatments remain out of reach. With the use of the latest tools in molecular phenotyping and genomics, together with Cyclana Bio we are focused on correcting this problem through this observational study." M. Lukasz Polanski, Principal Investigator at Peterborough City Hospital, added: "Enrolling the first participant is a key milestone in this vital clinical study that will help uncover causal mechanisms of endometriosis — a condition where a better understanding is so desperately needed to direct drug development research and help millions of women struggling with this progressive disease that can affect every stage of their life." A tissue-first methodology in a field shaped by intracellular thinking Dr. Léa Wenger, CEO and Co-Founder of Cyclana Bio, is direct about what she sees as the problem with the existing landscape. "Our tissue-first methodology represents a promising alternative approach in drug discovery, allowing us to reveal shared underlying mechanisms between patients, closing the gap on drug discovery programmes focusing on intracellular mechanisms that have failed to generate optimal treatments." Wenger is also candid about the stakes and the pace. "Our ultimate goal is to address a need to better serve millions of women suffering with a debilitating condition and develop life-changing therapies. We are excited for the pace and flexibility permitted by doing deep scientific research within the start-up model which will hopefully get us to better solutions faster. The HRA approval and recruitment of the first patients in the PEMP trial mark key milestones in our journey towards this goal. I'd like to thank the research staff in both NHS sites, who have been pivotal in getting this set up." The study is being funded by Cyclana Bio's £5 million pre-seed round , which closed in 2025. The company says future financing will be used to expand to additional study sites and extend its whole-tissue methodology to other chronic inflammatory conditions that share similar tissue-level characteristics. The policy context: a strategy that finally names the problem The PEMP launch arrives weeks after the UK government published its Renewed Women's Health Strategy for England in April 2026. The document is unusually blunt for a government policy paper. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, opens it by acknowledging that "the NHS has a problem with basic, everyday sexism and an appalling culture of medical misogyny." The data backing that claim is hard to dispute: healthy life expectancy among women in England fell by 2.5 years between 2019–21 and 2022–24, and the UK dropped from 20th to 26th place on female life expectancy among OECD nations between 2000 and 2022. For endometriosis specifically, the strategy commits to eliminating the "diagnostic odyssey" facing women with gynaecological conditions, and identifies menstrual and gynaecological health as priority areas for the new NHS Online virtual hospital, due to launch in 2027. The NIHR R&D Innovation Catalyst, launched this year, will provide funding and wrap-around support for high-priority health innovations, with women's health explicitly listed as a focus area. Research is also getting direct attention. The strategy states that the NIHR will now only fund research that appropriately considers sex-based differences. That shift in funding conditions, though straightforward on paper, represents a change in the incentive structure for biotech companies working in women's health. It creates a floor below which research quality on sex-specific conditions is no longer funded, which should in theory pull more rigorous, disease-specific study designs, of the kind Cyclana Bio is pursuing with PEMP, into the mainstream. A pattern of progress, and its limits The Cyclana Bio announcement fits into a broader moment of activity in women's health science in England. At BioFocus, we have been tracking several of these developments. Earlier this month we reported on the launch of the FREEDOM trial by Calla Lily Clinical Care, which is evaluating a tampon-like intravaginal delivery device for progesterone in women at risk of pregnancy loss, a first-in-human study addressing what that company describes as an unmet clinical need created by the shortcomings of existing vaginal pessaries. Both FREEDOM and PEMP share a structural characteristic: they are early-phase, observational or safety studies funded by pre-seed capital, doing the evidential groundwork that is a prerequisite for any treatment that might eventually reach patients. We have also covered two developments in cervical cancer that illustrate how reproductive health innovation is moving across multiple fronts simultaneously. Our analysis of cross-sector collaboration towards cervical cancer elimination examined the systemic barriers that continue to prevent the WHO's 90-70-90 elimination targets from being met, despite the tools to meet them being largely available. Separately, we reported on a study published in The BMJ showing that a modified sanitary pad, worn during menstruation, could detect HPV with accuracy comparable to clinician-collected cervical samples, a finding with significant implications for screening access, particularly among women who avoid clinic-based procedures. These stories trace a common outline. The problems are well documented and the ambition to solve them is real, but the gap between a clinical study opening and a treatment reaching patients is wide, and for endometriosis in particular, that gap has been wide for a long time. Final remarks PEMP is an observational study, which means Cyclana Bio is in the information-gathering phase rather than testing a therapeutic. The 500-patient target is substantial for a pre-seed-funded biotech, and the involvement of NHS Foundation Trusts in Cambridge and Peterborough gives the study institutional credibility. But the path from biological insight to a drug that clears regulatory review is long and expensive, and the endometriosis field has disappointed before. What Cyclana Bio is attempting (building 3D tissue models from human biopsy and menstrual fluid to interrogate a disease that has resisted simpler approaches) is scientifically coherent and relatively novel. Whether it is sufficient to crack the problem is a question the PEMP data will begin, but not finish, answering. Author BioFocus Newsroom Previous Next

Biotech UK Biotech Cyclana Bio is Trying to Understand Endometriosis From the Tissue Up, and it's Just Recruited its First Patients Cyclana Bio's PEMP study has received NHS ethics approval and begun enrolling women at two UK hospitals. If its tissue-first approach to drug discovery pays off, it could start answering questions that have gone unanswered for decades. Read More AviadoBio Bets on Blood-Brain Barrier Technology in Push for One-Time Alzheimer's Treatment A licensing deal with Apertura Gene Therapy gives the London-based biotech a clinically validated delivery system to pair with its gene-silencing platform, but the hard work is still ahead. Read More Atelerix Launches STORganoid: Cryo-Free Ambient-Temperature Preservation for Organoids and Spheroids Atelerix Launches STORganoid: Cryo-Free Ambient-Temperature Preservation for Organoids and Spheroids. Read More Andelyn Biosciences and Evolyra Therapeutics Join Forces to Advance Gene Therapies for Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy A new CDMO partnership aims to bring clinical-grade AAV gene therapies to patients with LGMD types 2C and 2D, with an IND filing targeted for the second half of 2026 Read More The Future of Medicine is in Your DNA An overview of gene therapy's history, recent breakthroughs, and what it's future may look like. Read More Virica Biotech and FUJIFILM Biosciences partner to improve AAV manufacturing efficiency Collaboration under Canada–Japan programme targets higher yields and scalable processes for gene therapy production. Read More Load more

As AI becomes more fluent in science writing, the line between sounding right and being right starts to blur. < Back AI in Science Writing and the Imitation of Understanding As AI becomes more fluent in science writing, the line between sounding right and being right starts to blur. Here is a sentence - Recent advances in artificial intelligence are transforming the landscape of scientific communication, enabling unprecedented efficiency, scalability and knowledge dissemination across disciplines. You have probably read something like this before. It sounds polished and completely reasonable. Now imagine reading ten versions of that in a row. A recent analysis by Originality.ai found that in November 2024, the quantity of AI-generated articles published online surpassed the number written by humans. For the first time, more text on the internet was being produced by models than by people. That is not necessarily a disaster, right? AI is getting very good at writing. In science communication, especially, it can summarise dense papers, smooth out awkward phrasing and generate explanations that feel clear and accessible. For researchers or content teams already stretched thin, the appeal is obvious. A graph by Graphite.io tracking the quantity of AI-generated content vs human-generated content on the internet. I saw this firsthand when speaking to a science writing initiative about contributing articles. I was explained that most of the pieces on their site were first written by ChatGPT. My role, they said, would be to “humanise” the AI drafts before publication. The website itself was filled with glossy AI-generated illustrations. The whole exchange left me with a slightly uneasy feeling, not just because AI was involved, but also because of how casually the line between writing and editing machine output had been blurred. And that is where my real concern with trust begins. Stress-testing the model Science writing is not generic content. It deals with clinical trials, survival statistics, risk factors and public health decisions. When something sounds confident and authoritative, readers assume it has been checked. As AI-generated writing becomes harder to distinguish from human work, small errors or entirely fabricated details become easier to miss. Out of curiosity, I started testing AI tools on topics I know well. The obvious place to start was my master’s thesis. My project looked at sex-specific differences in inflammatory patterns in the Drosophila midgut and how they might relate to colorectal cancer prognosis in men and women. If anything was going to trip the model up, I assumed it would be that. At first, the responses were surprisingly good. The right terminology was used, and the summaries felt coherent. If you skimmed them quickly, you would probably assume the model had a decent grasp of the literature. The cracks appeared when I started asking about specific statistics. I asked about colorectal cancer statistics in males and females. The model replied that males have more colorectal cancer diagnoses than females. On the surface, that sounds reasonable. But when I checked the source it had drawn from, the data was actually reporting incidence rates in 2020, where colorectal cancer incidence was higher in males. This is a screenshot from Chat GPT reporting on the results. Here is a screenshot from the actual study . That might seem like a minor distinction. In epidemiology, it is not. Incidence rates are not the same as total diagnoses, and a single year of data does not automatically translate into a broad rule. In science, those small differences in wording carry a lot of weight. Shift the phrasing slightly, and the meaning changes with it. The model did not seem bothered by that distinction. The sentence sounded plausible, so it stayed. AI completely hallucinating statistics is more common than you think The most unsettling example came when I asked the model to draft a short paragraph about CAR-T cell therapy using two specific research papers I provided. In the paragraph it wrote, relapse rates were said to drop from roughly seventy per cent to around thirty per cent after certain microbiome interventions. The number was precise, and the claim sounded convincing. The problem was that neither of the papers said that. When I asked the model where that statistic came from, it admitted that no single study reported exactly what the sentence claimed. The number had been generated to fit the narrative the paragraph was building. The most unsettling example came when I asked the model to draft a short paragraph about CAR-T cell therapy using two specific research papers I provided. In the paragraph it wrote, relapse rates were said to drop from roughly seventy per cent to around thirty per cent after certain microbiome interventions. The number was precise, and the claim sounded convincing. The problem was that neither of the papers said that. When I asked the model where that statistic came from, it admitted that no single study reported exactly what the sentence claimed. The number had been generated to fit the narrative the paragraph was building. If I had not read those papers closely myself, I might not have questioned it. The sources were real. The topic was real. Even the general direction of the claim felt believable. That is what makes these hallucinations difficult to spot. They rarely look dramatic or obviously wrong. More often, they are just a little too tidy, a statistic that fits too perfectly into the story being told. Why do hallucinations happen? Large language models are not trained on verified databases of facts. They learn patterns in text. Their job is to predict the next likely word in a sentence based on probability. That works surprisingly well for producing fluent explanations. But it also means the model is trying to make a paragraph sound right , not necessarily be right . If a discussion of immunotherapy often includes a statistic, the model may supply one. If a strong claim is usually followed by a citation, it may generate something that looks like one. The system is not checking a dataset in the background. It is assembling a sentence that fits the pattern it has seen before. Errors can creep in for many reasons. Training data can contain biases or inaccuracies. Complex models can overfit to familiar phrasing. But the underlying issue is simpler than that. The model has no sense of what the numbers actually represent. A relapse rate, an incidence rate, a survival curve. These are statistical concepts with real clinical implications, but to the model, they are just tokens that often appear near certain words. A human science writer approaches that information differently. Most of us come from research backgrounds, where questioning data is part of the training. Numbers are not just decoration in a paragraph. They sit within a broader context of study design, sample size, methodology and limitations. That habit of scepticism is what keeps a statistic from quietly drifting away from what the original research actually showed. Even the references can unravel I saw the same pattern when I asked for AMA style citations. The model produced references with incorrect author lists, missing accessed dates and broken links. At one point, it confidently contradicted itself about whether citation numbers should appear before or after punctuation. These are mechanical rules. A human checking the official guidance can confirm them in minutes. The model, however, responded with whatever phrasing best matched the question. It was performing understanding, not demonstrating it. For someone skimming an article online, those small inaccuracies are almost invisible. For someone making decisions based on that information, they matter. The bigger picture Science communication exists because most people do not want to read primary research papers. They should not have to. The point is to translate complex work into something accessible, engaging and meaningful. Anyone can now ask AI to explain a paper. That is not inherently a bad thing. The problem is that the explanation might be subtly wrong. Or missing context. Or slightly overconfident. Wrong information defeats the whole purpose of making science accessible. But there is something else that gets lost, and it is harder to measure. Science writing is creative. It is not just about relaying findings. It is about deciding why something matters. It is about asking, " How do I feel about this discovery? Why should you care? What does this change?” There is a voice in good science communication. A perspective. A sense that someone has wrestled with the material and chosen their words carefully. Many of us grew up watching documentaries narrated by David Attenborough. What made them powerful was not just the facts about ecosystems or species behaviour. It was the humanness. The quiet awe. The restraint. The understanding of when to be hopeful and when to sound concerned. AI can imitate cadence. It can approximate a structure. But it does not care whether the statistic it just generated shapes someone’s perception of cancer risk. It does not feel the weight of explaining a new therapy to someone who might one day need it. Science communication is not just about sounding informed. It is about being responsible. It is about connecting knowledge to people in a way that is careful, thoughtful and human. And that is something a predictive model, no matter how fluent, still cannot do. Author Aastha Kothari Previous Next

Pharma AI in Science Writing and the Imitation of Understanding As AI becomes more fluent in science writing, the line between sounding right and being right starts to blur. Read More LEO Pharma strengthens psoriasis portfolio in China with NMPA approval of Enstilar® NMPA approval of Enstilar® marks a key expansion for LEO Pharma in China, bringing a widely used topical psoriasis treatment to an estimated 6.5 million patients amid growing demand for innovative dermatology care. Read More Pharma & Biotech Quality Summit 2026 The event brings together industry leaders in Munich to explore how quality functions are evolving into strategic, risk-based and digitally enabled systems in response to increasing regulatory complexity and innovation in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Read More ProImmune and Roslin Institute Partner to Expand Tools for Veterinary Immunology Collaboration aims to develop species-specific binders to accelerate research and improve control of zoonotic diseases. Read More Inside Nxera Pharma’s Next-Generation Biopharma Model From AI-enabled GPCR discovery to partnership-driven growth, Nxera is redefining how medicines are built and commercialised. Read More Belite Bio Announces Landmark Phase 3 Success for Stargardt Disease Tinlarebant becomes the first therapy to show clinical benefit in a pivotal global trial, reducing retinal lesion growth by 36% and paving the way for a planned FDA filing in 2026. Read More Load more

Bioprocessing Broughton Expands Accredited Cannabinoid Testing The introduction of ISO/IEC 17025-accredited methods for oils and tinctures reflects rising expectations for analytical robustness as cannabinoid formulations diversify and regulatory scrutiny intensifies. Read More FUJIFILM Biotechnologies Launches UK’s Largest Single-Use Biomanufacturing Facility £400 Million Expansion Strengthens the UK Life Sciences Sector, Enhances Biomanufacturing Capacity, and Supports NHS and Global Pharmaceutical Innovation. Read More Meet the Workhorses Behind Biologics' Next Growth Wave The cell culture vessels industry is projected to grow from USD 5.10 billion in 2025 to USD 8.03 billion by 2030. Read More Lonza Strengthens Rapid Microbiology Portfolio With Planned Acquisition of Redberry Agreement enhances Lonza’s bioprocessing and QC solutions with validated four-day sterility testing. Read More Cytiva and WhiteLab Genomics Partner to Accelerate AI-Driven Stable Cell Line Development for AAV Collaboration leverages AI-driven predictive modeling to cut AAV stable cell line development timelines by up to 70%, reducing cost and accelerating path to clinic. Read More How Cell Culture Media Feeds the Future of Medicine Journey through the story of cell culture media in biopharmaceutical manufacturing - once considered mere cellular 'broth', now a critical component of modern medicine. Read More Load more

Sustainability Meet the new Carbon Sinks on the Scene: Beavers A comprehensive carbon budget from a Swiss wetland suggests that Eurasian beaver activity can dramatically boost carbon sequestration compared to unmodified stream corridors. Read More Engineering Crops From the Inside Out Manchester spinout Cytotrait raises £3 million to develop organelle based genetic engineering that could boost crop yields, resilience and sustainability. Read More Life on Mars - Science Fiction, or Real-Life Science? The futuristic visions of Mars we see on our movie screens could be closer than we think - but what’s the biology that would make it a reality? Read More Hidden Contrails in Clouds Could Be Worsening Aviation’s Climate Impact New study shows contrails forming inside cirrus clouds may add significantly to aviation-driven warming. Read More Every Breath Counts: Toward Sustainable Respiratory Care New investments and next-generation inhaler technology aim to reduce the climate impact of respiratory care while maintaining treatment access and safety. Read More A Modern Day Noah's Ark? Scientists are proposing a lunar biobank to preserve the world's endangered species. Read More Load more

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New study shows contrails forming inside cirrus clouds may add significantly to aviation-driven warming. < Back Hidden Contrails in Clouds Could Be Worsening Aviation’s Climate Impact New study shows contrails forming inside cirrus clouds may add significantly to aviation-driven warming. New research published in Nature Communications reveals that aircraft contrails, already known to contribute significantly to global warming, may have an even greater climate impact than previously estimated. The study highlights that many contrails form not in clear skies, but within existing cirrus clouds, where their effects have largely gone undetected and unaccounted for in climate models. Contrails form when hot, humid aircraft exhaust mixes with cold air at cruising altitudes, producing ice crystals that can spread into contrail cirrus. These high-altitude clouds trap outgoing heat and warm the planet, with an overall climate impact comparable to aviation’s carbon dioxide emissions. Until now, most assessments assumed contrails form mainly in clear skies, overlooking those embedded within natural cirrus clouds. Two complementary studies led by Petzold et al. and Seelig et al. challenge this assumption. Drawing on seven years of in-situ aircraft measurements, satellite observations, and meteorological data, the researchers show that contrail-favourable conditions frequently occur inside existing cirrus. In northern mid-latitudes, around half of these conditions arise within subvisible cirrus or near-clear skies, situations most likely to amplify warming, while the remainder occur within thicker cirrus clouds, where their climate effect is more complex. Using high-resolution lidar data from the CALIPSO satellite, Seelig et al. were able to isolate and quantify the radiative forcing of more than 40,000 embedded contrails. Their analysis found that these “hidden” contrails exert a measurable warming effect, particularly at night, and could add roughly 10% to current estimates of contrail-related radiative forcing when scaled globally. The findings suggest that embedded contrails represent a non-negligible and previously underestimated component of aviation’s overall climate footprint. They also underscore the challenge of distinguishing contrail-induced cirrus from natural clouds, a task that requires advanced satellite observations, aircraft trajectory data, and targeted atmospheric measurements. As global temperatures continue to rise, the research reinforces the urgency of addressing aviation’s non-CO₂ climate effects. Improved contrail detection and prediction, operational strategies such as altitude adjustments to avoid contrail-prone regions, and integration of natural cloud effects into climate models could offer near-term, cost-effective pathways to reduce aviation-related warming while longer-term solutions, including sustainable aviation fuels, continue to develop. Author BioFocus Newsroom Previous Next

In a strategic move to strengthen its portfolio in the neurotechnology space, Stryker has acquired NICO Corporation, a specialist in minimally invasive brain surgery devices. < Back Stryker Acquires NICO Corporation In a strategic move to strengthen its portfolio in the neurotechnology space, Stryker has acquired NICO Corporation, a specialist in minimally invasive brain surgery devices. In a strategic move to strengthen its portfolio in the neurotechnology space, Stryker has acquired NICO Corporation, a specialist in minimally invasive brain surgery devices. This acquisition is part of Stryker’s ongoing expansion in the neurosurgical market, adding NICO’s advanced technologies to their already robust offering. With this deal, Stryker aims to enhance its capabilities in brain surgery, improving patient outcomes and driving innovation in the treatment of complex neurological conditions. Stryker Corporation is a global leader in medical technology, providing a wide range of products and services across orthopedics, medical and surgical devices, neurotechnology, and spine. Headquartered in Michigan, Stryker specializes in developing innovative solutions to improve patient care and surgical efficiency. Their portfolio includes advanced surgical equipment, robotic systems, implants, and technologies designed to treat a variety of medical conditions. Stryker operates in over 100 countries, working with healthcare professionals to enhance patient outcomes through cutting-edge medical innovations. NICO Corporation specializes in developing minimally invasive technologies for brain surgery, focusing on improving outcomes in tumor and stroke treatment. NICO’s devices enable neurosurgeons to access and remove brain tissue through small, precise openings, minimizing trauma to surrounding areas. Their innovative solutions, such as the BrainPath and Myriad systems, are used for tumor resection, hemorrhage evacuation, and other delicate brain procedures, making neurosurgical treatments safer and more effective for patients. Author BioFocus Newsroom Previous Next

VYNE Therapeutics has paused its Phase 1b trial of VYN202 for psoriasis after the FDA imposed a clinical hold due to testicular toxicity observed in non-clinical studies. < Back VYNE Therapeutics Faces Clinical Hold on VYN202 Program Following Toxicity Findings VYNE Therapeutics has paused its Phase 1b trial of VYN202 for psoriasis after the FDA imposed a clinical hold due to testicular toxicity observed in non-clinical studies. VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: VYNE) has announced a temporary halt in its Phase 1b clinical trial of VYN202, a novel treatment for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, following a clinical hold imposed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA’s decision came after the company observed testicular toxicity in dogs during a non-clinical toxicology study of VYN202. As a result, VYNE has suspended all screening, patient enrollment, and dosing in the ongoing Phase 1b trial. The company, however, emphasized that no serious adverse events have been reported in the patients already enrolled in the study. FDA Clinical Hold: A Step Toward Resolution VYNE has expressed its commitment to working closely with the FDA to resolve the clinical hold swiftly. "While we are disappointed by this unexpected development, the safety and well-being of patients in our studies is our top priority,” said David Domzalski, President and CEO of VYNE Therapeutics. "We intend to work closely with the FDA to address the clinical hold as expeditiously as possible and we plan to provide additional updates pending continued engagement with the FDA.” Despite the setback with VYN202, the company emphasized that the clinical hold does not affect its ongoing Phase 2b trial of repibresib gel, an entirely different compound designed for the treatment of nonsegmental vitiligo. VYNE is still on track to release top-line results from the 24-week, double-blind, vehicle-controlled portion of the Phase 2b study in mid-2025. About VYNE Therapeutics VYNE Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing differentiated therapies aimed at treating chronic inflammatory and immune-mediated conditions with significant unmet medical needs. The company's proprietary BET inhibitors, part of its InhiBET™ platform, are designed to overcome limitations seen in early-generation BET inhibitors, offering enhanced selectivity and alternative administration routes. Investors and stakeholders can follow VYNE’s progress and updates through its website and official filings, as the company continues to navigate its clinical trials and regulatory challenges. Author BioFocus Newsroom Previous Next

< Back World Health Summit 11th - 13th October, 2026 Berlin, Germany From Crisis to Resilience: Innovating for Health. ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. Previous Next