profile

The Needle

If you are interested in the commercialization of early-stage biomedical science, you have come to the right place. The Needle provides you with insights on what goes on in this dynamic space: what new discoveries have translational potential, what startups are attracting funding or signing deals, and more.

The Needle Issue #23

ISSUE 23 Welcome to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. January was an upbeat month for biotech financing and dealmaking, although most of that activity was US-based. Funding highlights include the opening of the IPO market for companies with clinical assets like Aktis Oncology, Erasca, Agomab and Eikon, and $100+ million financing rounds...

The Needle Issue #22

ISSUE 22 Happy belated New Year from The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. With the scramble to get announcements and deals before the biotech schmoozefest JP Morgan, it’s been a busy start to January. In terms of translational research, scientists from Ikena Oncology (now Imagene Bio) Espervita Therapeutics, Scripps spinout Abide...

The Needle Issue #21

ISSUE 21 Welcome to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. It has been a busy few weeks for rare disease news, culminating with the FDA’s first approval for a treatment sponsored by a non-profit foundation. In terms of translational research a bumper crop of companies announced research breakthroughs, including Enterprise Therapeutics, Lyvgen...

The Needle Issue #20

ISSUE 20 Welcome to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. In this issue, we look at one of biotech’s hottest areas—multi-specific antibodies. Although the hype has somewhat dissipated since Akeso’s September announcement of disappointing overall survival data from the HARMONi-A study of its bi-specific (PD-1 x VEGF) ivonescimab in lung...

The Needle Issue #19

ISSUE 19 Welcome to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. In this issue, we cover an exciting proof of principle for designing antibodies from scratch using machine learning. Our scan of preclinical startups disclosing research either at meetings or in journals returned a bumper crop. Financings of preclinical startups also ticked over at a...

The Needle Issue #18

ISSUE 18 Welcome to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. In this issue, we take a look at Treg cell therapy following the announcement of the Nobel prize. In keeping with the Treg theme, we noted that newly relocated US startup Regcell published a couple of papers in prominent journals. Our survey of the translational literature highlights...

The Needle Issue #17

ISSUE 17 Welcome to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. In this issue, promising clinical results for UniQure’s AAV serotype 5 delivered synthetic miRNA in Huntington’s patients prompted us to take a look at the commercial landscape for companies pursuing the truncated huntingtin (HTT) exon1 transcript and its product. Our survey of the...