Freudenberg Medical is a global provider for medical device design, development, and manufacturing with 11 locations worldwide. Innovation is at the core of our company and we are proud of our industry-leading quality, lean manufacturing, and focus on innovative products and processing technologies to help reduce costs and get customer’s products to market quickly.
For the Biopharma market, Freudenberg cleanroom manufactures the PharmaFocus® Premium and HelixMark® brands of platinum silicone tubing, stoppers, and gaskets for bioprocessing and single-use applications.
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BioPharmGuy
As of this writing we are at 9,999 subscribers, so I'm going to assume one more of you shows up between now and mailing time. Thank you all for subscribing and getting us to this 10,000 subscriber milestone. I hate the overuse of the word amazing, but 10,000 may merit it.
We get comments from a lot of you and it seems that many of you really appreciate a little levity in this mostly serious industry. Happy to bring it - we have fun doing so. It's also cool that there is at least one competitor sort-of trying to cop our style. Flattering, but there's only one original.
If you ever come across anything interesting/weird/funny - let us know. There might be a tee shirt in it for you.
-BPG
http vs https
In February 2020 we checked how many companies in our database had secure websites vs unsecure. Google factors security into their search results, so it can be an important thing for a website. Last year, 68% of companies worldwide, 70% of those in the US had secured their websites.
The current numbers are 8310/10452 worldwide (79.5%) and 5219/6511 in the US (80.2%). So the gap has basically closed, while 20% of companies continue to not give a rip.
Charles River
Hey, do you work at Charles River? If so, please tell your marketing friends to look into our Premium Listings. You already get 200 referrals per month and could double or triple that with a Premium Listing, which seem like a no-brainer.
Addition & Attrition
14 companies added, three removed. Summary available on downloads page. By the way, that downloads page is not linked to anywhere on our website, so this is the only place we currently mention it. If you know anyone who may like to see that resource tell them to subscribe ASAP.
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That's Interesting...
This week Sparrow Pharmaceuticals brought in Robert Jacks to be the new CEO. Jacks' Sparrow will continue its quest for some treasure by way of their targeted therapies for disorders of corticosteroid excess. You can accept that Jacks is a CEO and a good man, or you can’t - you’ll have to square with that some day.
Team Boast
Team Roast
Ok, we need some balance over here after that unbecoming display of civility. The Nanologica team here went with the 'formal in the forest' picture motif. In terms of style, you could say these are some real trailblazers. The last lady went rogue and did her own 'tops in a copse' theme. She even ducked behind the ivy a bit - camouflage, baby.
Horseshoe Crab Blood
An interesting tidbit in the biotech industry is the important role played by the horseshoe crab, specifically its blood. You may know mammalian blood contains iron; horseshoe-crab blood contains copper, making it blue. And by blue, we don't mean the blueish appearance of some of your veins - we mean Great Bluedini Kool-Aid blue:
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Their blood has an amazing ability to bind endotoxins, which are bacterial byproducts. That blood is used in the LAL Assay that tests most biotech products for presence of bacteria.
The crabs are not killed, at least not purposely. They're brought to a lab, bled, and returned to sea. Pictures show there's a dystopian feel to it all. There is some loss of life, though methods have been improved over time to reduce this. Still, there have been legal challenges to this practice.
A synthetic version known as recombinant Factor C exists (rFC), and was used in the approval of a drug for the first time in 2018. Studies have shown rFC yields comparable results to LAL.
It might seem like a good idea for everyone to switch to rFC, but it's not so easy to do in such a highly regulated industry. It requires a lot of proof of equivalence and is not something that can be done quickly and cheaply. So hopefully the legal issues do not put a total damper on the harvest. If there is a shortage it could be a really big problem for the production of many biological products.
The good news is this blood costs $60,000/gallon when it's not in short supply, so at least it's doubtful people will be hoarding it in plastic shopping bags.
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α-gal Allergy
Crazy fact: the bite of a lone star tick can result in victims becoming allergic to pork/red meat and other mammalian products. This happens when α-gal, a sugar molecule, is transferred from the tick, triggering an immune response that renders the person permanently allergic to that molecule. A tricky part about identifying this allergy is the delayed reaction - it can take many hours for the symptoms to be revealed.
Luckily for carnivores out there, scientists are working on it. Nature Biotechnology did a feature on genetically modifying pigs to lack α-gal. There are medical applications where this would be highly useful, such as tissue transplants of porcine skin. But the market for non-allergenic meats is probably going to drive the technology as currently 34,000 Americans, mostly in the southeast where the lone star ticks live, are affected.
Like Rabbits
Over the past 19 years, scientists have slowly progressed towards using rebuilt rabbit uteruses using the animal's own stem cells. As of last year they were successfully yielding offspring in 40% of attempts. No one who knows anything likes to predict when the next great technology will become available (flying cars, driverless cars, cold fusion...) but in the not so distant future, there may be an answer for the many women who wish to bear children, but lack the uterine capability to do so.
Lunacentric Universe
Someone on Reddit posted an animation of what the paths of Earth/Sun/Venus might look like to an observer on the moon. Kinda cool.
(Un)blinded by the light (sensing proteins)
A man in France was treated with a gene therapy designed to trigger the production of light-sensing algae proteins in the back of his retina. It worked. He reported being able to see the white lines at a pedestrian crosswalk after being blind for decades.
Ideologue Alert
Right Wing loon Tucker Carlson is scaring his viewers with facts such as '4000 people died soon after getting the Covid vaccine'. While technically true, it's also true that the average person has a .035% chance of dying in any given two weeks. And it's also true that 163 million Americans have gotten a Covid vaccine dose. So in reality 57,000 of those vaccine recipients should have been expected to die within two weeks of getting a Covid vaccine simply by being American humans. That sure as hell doesn't mean the vaccine had anything to do with it. Pathetic.
Limited Lifetime
In case the total lack of examples had kept you guessing, researchers have concluded humans can't live past 150 years old, at least without some sort of futuristic anti-aging technology. Their research focused on the body's ability to recover from stresses. They extrapolate that by 150 there would be no ability for the body to recover from pretty much anything. So now when you turn 149, you'll rest easy knowing it's your last.
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