Fresenius WuXi Biologics Partner, Pfizer Deploys Edison's AI Scientist, Ultima, Illumina Win Singapore National Sequencing Award

November 7, 2026

By Bio-IT World Staff 

November 7, 2026 | HuBMAP data portal opens 9,000 healthy-tissue datasets to researchers; NCI awards Montefiore Einstein $10 million to study breast cancer dormancy; UCB adds Cradle's protein design platform across its antibody discovery pipeline; NIH funds a $16.4 million hepatitis C vaccine center at Scripps Research; Transpharmation acquires organoid developer OrganoTherapeutics; new gene editing products from Integrated DNA Technologies and Aldevron; and more. 

Circular Genomics and PharmatrophiX announced a biomarker collaboration that will apply Circular Genomics' blood-based circular RNA profiling and analytics platform, CircPath, across PharmatrophiX's LM11A-31 program. The initial focus is a planned open-label Alzheimer's disease biomarker study of LM11A-31, a small molecule targeting the p75 neurotrophin receptor. Circular Genomics will use its research-use-only platform to characterize baseline molecular heterogeneity and track pathway-level changes over the course of treatment, with circRNA findings integrated alongside clinical, cognitive, imaging, proteomic and established Alzheimer's biomarker data. The companies intend to evaluate expanding the work into future Alzheimer's studies, an HIV-associated dementia program and progressive supranuclear palsy. Press release. 

UCB and Cradle announced a strategic collaboration under which UCB will apply Cradle's AI-driven protein design and engineering platform within selected discovery projects, from hit generation through lead optimization and preclinical readiness. The agreement extends UCB's digital antibody discovery and engineering program, which combines the company's own antibody discovery platform with computational science and a network of technology and research partners. As UCB scientists run programs on the platform, experimental results feed back into program-specific models, creating a lab-in-the-loop cycle intended to help optimize candidates across the full set of properties required for development. Cradle's platform is in use across more than 80 active R&D programs. Press release. 

Integrated DNA Technologies and Aldevron, both Danaher companies, launched research-grade mRNA products intended to simplify base and prime editing workflows. The offering includes PE Ultra mRNA, which features an engineered prime editor; chemically modified Alt-R pegRNAs; a bioinformatics tool for pegRNA design; six stocked ABE8e base editor mRNA variants spanning different PAM compatibilities and fidelity profiles; and a kit for evaluating all six editors in parallel. IDT also released Alt-R CRISPR-Cas9 sgRNA XT. The products follow the companies' September launch of stocked S.p. Cas9 mRNA and are orderable at scales from 20 micrograms to 1 milligram, with larger scales available through Aldevron by custom order. Press release. 

Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center received a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Cancer Institute for a multi-institutional study of breast cancer relapse, led by Julio A. Aguirre-Ghiso, director of the center's Cancer Dormancy Institute. The project will examine early disseminated cancer cells that survive surgery and other treatment by remaining dormant, analyzing clinical data and tissue samples from patients with ductal carcinoma in situ to determine whether specific characteristics of those cells are associated with later recurrence. Collaborating investigators are based at Stanford University, Columbia University, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University at Albany. Press release. 

Harvard Medical School and collaborating institutions launched an online portal providing free, open access to an atlas of the cells, tissues and organ systems of healthy human bodies. Described Nov. 2 in Nature Communications, the portal is the home of data collected by the Human BioMolecular Atlas Program, an eight-year effort funded by the National Institutes of Health Common Fund that involves more than 600 consortium members at over 60 institutions. It draws on more than 9,000 datasets from over 500 donors and more than 25 types of molecular and imaging data. Portal work was led by researchers at HMS, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University. Press release. 

Fresenius entered an exclusive development agreement with WuXi Biologics giving it option rights to up to 37 biosimilar candidates over the next decade, which would expand its portfolio from 29 marketed and pipeline molecules to as many as 66, addressing more than €370 billion in originator list-price-based sales. Fresenius will select candidates against its established criteria, hold exclusive global commercialization rights and the full economics of each commercialized product, and compensate WuXi Biologics on a fee-for-service basis for each candidate it selects. The portfolio spans 13 therapeutic areas and includes monoclonal and bispecific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates and fusion proteins. Initial development is expected to focus on polatuzumab vedotin and teprotumumab. Press release. 

Illumina and Ultima Genomics have been selected for the SG-INSIGHT study, a cohort under Phase III of Singapore's National Precision Medicine program, for which Precision Health Research, Singapore is the central coordinating office. Phase III expands the effort to about 450,000 individuals and, unlike Phase II, includes patients across a wide spectrum of health conditions drawn from Singapore's three public healthcare clusters. Illumina will perform the sequencing in Singapore through its local genomics facility where scientific, laboratory and bioinformatics teams will oversee sample preparation, sequencing, and genomic data analysis. Co-located with Illumina's manufacturing and R&D operations, the facility will seek the necessary accreditation and comply with Singapore's Healthcare Services Act 2020 (HCSA), strengthening its commitment to quality, safety, regulatory compliance and biomedical innovation. Illumina Announcement Ultima’s UG200 Sequencing Platform has was selected as part of a consortium led by Lucence, which will provide clinical program management and local operational leadership, with QIAGEN supporting sample preparation and automation. Ultima will supply sequencing and genomic analysis using the UG200 and its Solaris 2.0 chemistry. Ultima Announcement.  

Edison Scientific announced an agreement to deploy the Edison AI Platform and Kosmos, the company's AI scientist, across Pfizer's biopharmaceutical research and development pipeline. Kosmos will access Pfizer data spanning oncology, internal medicine, immunology and other areas to support Pfizer scientists, inform R&D decisions and help accelerate discovery of potential new medicines. Kosmos is designed to learn continuously, building integrated world models that combine publicly available sources with proprietary data from Pfizer's internal drug development work. Edison's forward-deployed scientists and engineers will work with Pfizer research teams to build Kosmos into specific workflows. Edison was spun out of the nonprofit research lab FutureHouse in 2025. Press release. 

Transpharmation acquired OrganoTherapeutics, a Luxembourg-based developer of patient-derived organoid technologies for neurodegenerative and CNS disorders. A spin-off of the University of Luxembourg, OrganoTherapeutics builds human iPSC-derived brain organoid and assembloid models for Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, ALS, frontotemporal dementia and rare neurological disorders, with studies spanning model generation, compound testing, imaging, electrophysiology, omics and machine learning-based data analysis. It will continue to operate as a subsidiary. For Transpharmation, a preclinical contract research organization focused on neuroscience, pain and metabolic disease, the deal is a first step toward translational CRO services that use human tissues and non-animal models alongside its in vivo pharmacology. Press release. 

Scripps Research will lead a new hepatitis C vaccine development center funded by a $16.4 million, five-year award from the National Institutes of Health. The Cooperative Center for Rational HCV Vaccine Design & Evaluation, supported through the NIH's U19 cooperative agreements program, brings together investigators at Scripps Research, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the University of Pennsylvania and the Oregon National Primate Research Center. One project will determine the viral structures recognized by antibodies using X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy and cryo-electron tomography; a second will generate vaccine prototypes across platform technologies and compare them head-to-head. The award also supports a web-based HCV immune response database. Press release.