As another year comes to a close, we reflect on 12 months filled with innovation and collaboration at TherapeutAix. From kickstarting the year with strategic planning in snowy Aachen to closing with a comprehensive review of IPF research, this year has been marked by exciting developments and impactful contributions to the life sciences sector.
Here’s a look back at the highlights that shaped our year.
A snowy start
We started 2024 with a snowy get-together in Aachen which provided us with the opportunity to get together as a team, map the year out, and carry out a full strategic review of our services to align them with our clients’ needs. We even made the time to attend Aachen’s first Parkrun!
The innovation landscape
In March, we co-organised the SMR meeting titled ‘The Innovation Landscape’ in London. The meeting explored recent developments and changes across the life sciences sector, including valuation readjustments, AI-driven R&D, M&As and financing challenges. Our Translational Science Director Darcey Black chaired a session titled ‘Funding an Innovation Landscape’ which included speakers from Medicines Discovery Catapult and Pioneer Group. The event was a great success and a chance to catch up with those in the sector. Darcey discusses the takeaways from the meeting here.
Drug developments in NASH & IPF
March also brought an exciting update in the NASH drug development space. Resmethrin, a thyroid hormone receptor-beta agonist, was approved by the FDA for the early treatment of the disease. We discuss what this means for future drug development programs here.
Speaking of drug development, during the summer we published a blog on the use of AI to identify novel therapeutic targets which could help drive drug R&D in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), a lung disease that has proven notoriously difficult to develop an effective treatment for. Whether AI in target identification marks a paradigm shift in drug discovery remains to be seen, but we will be keeping a close eye on these developments.
A summer of events
June was a busy period for events, with the Extracellular Matrix Pharmacology Congress taking place in Copenhagen and the Fraunhofer Models of Lung Disease conference in Hannover. Darcey attended ECM2024 and presented a talk on ‘Biomarkers in IPF: How can they help drug discovery?’ Read his reflections from the event here.
Pharmacology Director Simon Cruwys attended the Fraunhofer 2024 meeting and presented a talk on ‘How do recent clinical trial results influence the evolution of preclinical assays and the projects that they support?’ Read Simon’s takeaways from the meeting here.
Our final event of the year was the ERS Congress that took place in September in beautiful Vienna. Simon and Project Strategy Director Bob Humphries attended the event, with this year’s theme of ‘Humans and machines: getting the balance right’ focusing on AI developments in the respiratory field. We were also delighted to see our client, Odin Therapeutics, selected to present the data we had collaborated on with our partners Fraunhofer ITEM and Nordic Bioscience to develop assays to support non-TGF pathway approaches to tackling lung fibrosis. Read more about it here.
Our latest IPF review published in Drug Discovery Today
We rounded off a strong year with our latest review: ‘Drug Discovery and Development in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: The Changing Landscape’ which was published in Drug Discovery Today. In the review, we reflect on the state of IPF research including the recent clinical setbacks and what the future might hold. You can find out more here.
We followed this up with a report contrasting the therapeutic scenario with IPF to that of asthma, where multiple effective therapies have been available for decades, but challenges persist.
2024 in numbers
2024 has been a great year for TherapeutAix, taking us across the world to engage with the life sciences community, contribute to cutting-edge research and reflect on the challenges and triumphs of drug discovery and development. We’d like to finish off by saying a huge thank you to all our dedicated clients and contacts for your continued support this year. We plan to carry this momentum into 2025, so here’s to another year of innovation and impact!