| Name | Title | Contact Details |
|---|---|---|
Pascal Wotling |
Chief Technical Operations Officer | Profile |
The trillions of microbes that call us home – the human microbiome – perform critical functions that preserve our health including helping develop our immune system, manufacturing nutrients such as vitamins, and harvesting energy from the diet. Alterations of the human microbiome are increasingly recognized as a key factor in autoimmune, metabolic, infectious and many other diseases. For millions of years, humans have co-evolved with this community of microbes, communicating in an ancient language that holds critical clues about how autoimmune and infectious diseases develop. This language is based on a system of signals that our resident microbes use to successfully colonize us, such as byproducts of bacterial metabolism and factors that bacteria use to adapt to human niches. Recent discoveries have shown that most of these signals do not lead to disease, rather, they promote our long-term survival. Vedanta Biosciences is developing an innovative class of therapies that modulate pathways of interaction between the human microbiome and the host immune system. Vedanta Biosciences was co-founded by PureTech and a group of world renowned experts in immunology and microbiology.
Ocera Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of OCR-002 (ornithine phenylacetate). OCR-002 is an ammonia scavenger and has been granted orphan drug designation and Fast Track status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of hyperammonemia and resultant hepatic encephalopathy in patients with acute liver failure and acute-on-chronic liver disease.
Applied DNA is commercializing LinearDNA™, its proprietary, large-scale polymerase chain reaction (“PCR”)-based manufacturing platform that allows for the large-scale production of specific DNA sequences. The LinearDNA platform has utility in the nucleic acid-based in vitro diagnostics and preclinical nucleic acid-based drug development and manufacturing market. The platform is used to manufacture DNA for customers as components of in vitro diagnostic tests and for preclinical nucleic acid-based drug development in the fields of adoptive cell therapies (CAR T and TCR therapies), DNA vaccines (anti-viral and cancer), RNA therapies, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) based therapies, and gene therapies. Applied DNA has also established a COVID-19 diagnostic and testing offering that is in the early stages of commercialization and is grounded in the Company’s deep expertise in DNA. The LinearDNA platform also has non-biologic applications, such as supply chain security, anti-counterfeiting and anti-theft technology. Key end-markets include textiles, pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, and cannabis, among others.
BioCentriq was founded in 2018 and is a full service CDMO for cell and gene therapy process development and clinical manufacturing. Our ISO-7 certified GMP clinical manufacturing facility is in Newark, NJ. At this facility, we manufacture autologous and allogeneic cell therapies, gene therapies and provide analytical and quality services across several cell types. We offer viral vector production, cell and viral banking and upstream and downstream processing. Additionally, we have the capabilities to manufacture immunotherapies, including monoclonal antibodies and proteins, and vaccines. Our facilities provide full customer access to work in hybrid teams from tech transfer through GMP clinical production. BioCentriq has a BSL-2 certified process development facility located in South Brunswick, NJ to accelerate scale-up and translation activities. We are vendor and technology agnostic and work with our clients to leverage the optimal technology platform for your product through the development process. In support of our full suite of process development and clinical manufacturing services, the team at BioCentriq offers pre-defined and custom workforce development programs as well as full access to our centers during projects in a unique collaborative approach with our expert scientists to knowledge transfer.
Celsis Inc is a Chicago, IL-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotech sector.