Megan Conlon, PhD

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🚀 Exciting News from Illumina! 🚀 Illumina is set to spin off its multi-cancer early detection firm, GRAIL, by issuing shares to existing stockholders later this month. 📅 Effective June 24, Illumina will issue one share of Grail for every six shares of Illumina stock, retaining a 14.5% stake in Grail. 🧬💹 Grail will become an independent, publicly traded company, listing on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "GRAL." With around 31.1 million shares of common stock and an estimated capitalization of $3.99 billion, Grail is poised for a remarkable journey in advancing genomics and improving human health. 🌍🔬 CEO Jacob Thaysen emphasises this milestone as a pivotal step for Illumina: "As we prepare to lead the next era of genomics innovation, we believe Grail will play an important role in advancing the industry and improving human health." This move follows the divestiture orders from the US FTC and European Commission and is aligned with activist investor Carl Icahn's campaign, which led to significant leadership changes within Illumina. 🚀📊 Transaction costs are estimated at $20M for Grail and $60-75M for Illumina, with Grail's cash position post-spinoff bolstered by Illumina’s funding. 💰💼 In after-hours trading, Illumina's shares saw a 2% increase, reflecting positive investor sentiment. 📈💹 #Genomics #HealthcareInnovation #BiotechNews #Investing #NASDAQ #Grail #Illumina #GenomicsRevolution #HealthTech 🚀🔬💼

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Is AI an end all be all for designing selective SM drugs? Not so Fast! Read this story in depth, and try and hypothesize how would AI be able to help design this type of inhibitor. Hot take: MD simulations are still incredibly powerful tools in the hands of trained biochemists. Hot take #2: Protein DYNAMICS, NOT Protein STRUCTURE is the REAL CHALLENGE.

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Happy Thursday all! Check out this compelling open access Nature Communications Chemistry article by Hao et al., "Mechanistic insights into a heterobifunctional degrader-induced PTPN2/N1 complex" https://lnkd.in/g2qWmM5b and take a peek at our Targeted Protein Degradation portfolio and message me to chat about related CRO services: https://lnkd.in/guQaQE9z Abstract: PTPN2 (protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 2, or TC-PTP) and PTPN1 are attractive immuno-oncology targets, with the deletion of Ptpn1 and Ptpn2 improving response to immunotherapy in disease models. Targeted protein degradation has emerged as a promising approach to drug challenging targets including phosphatases. We developed potent PTPN2/N1 dual heterobifunctional degraders (Cmpd-1 and Cmpd-2) which facilitate efficient complex assembly with E3 ubiquitin ligase CRL4CRBN, and mediate potent PTPN2/N1 degradation in cells and mice. To provide mechanistic insights into the cooperative complex formation introduced by degraders, we employed a combination of structural approaches. Our crystal structure reveals how PTPN2 is recognized by the tri-substituted thiophene moiety of the degrader. We further determined a high-resolution structure of DDB1-CRBN/Cmpd-1/PTPN2 using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). This structure reveals that the degrader induces proximity between CRBN and PTPN2, albeit the large conformational heterogeneity of this ternary complex. The molecular dynamic (MD)-simulations constructed based on the cryo-EM structure exhibited a large rigid body movement of PTPN2 and illustrated the dynamic interactions between PTPN2 and CRBN. Together, our study demonstrates the development of PTPN2/N1 heterobifunctional degraders with potential applications in cancer immunotherapy. Furthermore, the developed structural workflow could help to understand the dynamic nature of degrader-induced cooperative ternary complexes. #drugdiscovery #cancerresearch #tpd #immunotherapy #immunooncology #cryoem #scientificresearch

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Antibiotics are used to treat BV and UTI, but recurrences are common. Antibiotics inhibit or kill the bacteria that cause these conditions, but and they do not prevent recurrence since they do not restore protective Lactobacillus. To address this unmet medical need, Osel developed a proprietary Live Biotherapeutic Product (LBP), called LACTIN-V that contains the protective vaginal strain, Lactobacillus crispatus CTV-05. L. crispatus CTV-05 produces lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, adheres to vaginal epithelial cells, and antagonizes bacteria associated with BV and uropathogenic E. coli, which is responsible for most UTIs. LACTIN-V has also been shown to reduce preterm birth.

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Another nice publication, this time from Prof. Charlotte Stadler and team at SciLifeLab, demonstrating the complementarity of Akoya PCF with other imaging systems. We've seen this with same-slide protocols for #Xenium, #CosMx and #GeoMX. Let's be honest, conjugation is not always the optimal approach for some markers. This is a useful way to ensure these are still incorporated, enabling researchers to build a comprehensive, proteomic map of the tissue at single-cell resolution! #spatialProteomics #makingmultiplexingeasy

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