Blueberry are delighted to welcome Mr. Andrew Kay to Blueberry Therapeutics as Chairman of the Board. Andrew brings more than 30 years of commercial and leadership experience in the pharmaceutical sector, latest as CEO of Algeta ASA. During Andrew’s leadership, Algeta’s lead product, Xofigo, was approved by the FDA and EMA for the treatment of bone metastases in castration resistant prostate cancer patients. In February 2014, Algeta was acquired by its partner Bayer AG for USD 2.9 billion. Andrew’s previous roles include Global Head of Marketing and Sales and a Member of the Healthcare Committee and Pharmaceutical Executive Committee at Novartis, and several other senior commercial positions in Europe and the USA with AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Sandoz and Boots.

Blueberry Therapeutics are delighted to have won an SBRI NHS contract to progress their smart wound dressing technology through Feasibility studies. The contract will allow Blueberry to complete preclinical feasibility studies of a hydrogel based SMART wound dressing for the treatment of Chronic Diabetic Foot Ulcers. Dave Cook CSO of Blueberry commented “Working with our collaborators at the Welsh Wound Innovation Centre and Public Health England, we are now progressing our research into developing a range of new dressings with beneficial properties for patients with chronic wounds such as diabetic foot ulcers.”

Both Dr John Ridden (CEO) and Dr Mike Davies (CMO) will be at Biotrinity from the 11th May through until 13th May. We are very much looking forward to meeting with old friends, colleagues, investors and attending as many of the showcase presentations and panel discussions as possible. See you there!

Blueberry today announced the successful completion of an investment round raising a total of $1.75M from both UK and Swiss based investors. The investment will help take its 2 most advanced programs through to regulatory approval stage. Dr Mike Davies, Chief Medical Officer at Blueberry Therapeutics, commented that “this exciting investment now allows Blueberry to progress its most advanced nanotechnology program to clinical trial application (CTA) in EU and the second program, in onychomycosis, to IND stage in the USA before entering clinical trials early next year’.

Blueberry Therapeutics today announced the launch of their new web site. John Ridden CEO and co-founder described the new site as a ‘fresh clean communication route through which we can reach out to patients, collaborators and investors’. The new website was designed with the help of Pitch&Co the North West based marketing company

Blueberry announces that it has started collaborating with The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University to explore development of new anti-fungal drugs and treatments. This collaborative project brings together leading academics at both of Sheffield’s world-class universities with Blueberry’s drug discovery and development expertise and will explore the development of new drugs and treatments for a wide range of fungal infections.

John Ridden presented a Keynote address at the MRC Workshop in London on the 25th November 2014. The topic of this important meeting ‘Accelerating therapeutic and diagnostic development’. John commented that this meeting brings together a number of influential scientists from both academia and industry to discuss the challenges of how we can treat antimicrobial resistant infections. The MRC have announced a large new grant pool specifically to encourage research in AMR through innovative new treatments, diagnostic tests and novel therapeutic modalities

David’s paper written with colleagues from AstraZeneca is entitled “Lessons learned from the fate of AstraZeneca’s drug pipeline: a five-dimensional framework”  and is a comprehensive analysis of AstraZeneca’s portfolio between 2005-2010. The paper examines in detail the root-causes for drug project failure and identifies several features (“The 5Rs”) which describe successful R&D programmes.

David Cook said “This paper presents the outcome of a major portfolio review performed within AstraZeneca and identifies lessons and principles that are applicable to all drug discovery and development projects. By adopting these principles we can ensure that we maximize the likely success of our projects by having a clear understanding of patient needs and how new drugs will meet these needs. These principles also help us focus programmes on efficiently answering the key questions that must be addressed during R&D if we are to bring new treatments to patients and the market.”

Blueberry begins a collaboration with the University of Manchester exploring the mode of action and therapeutic potential of novel antiflammatory agents. 

Blueberry Therapeutics (Blueberry) today announced that it had started a collaboration with Professor Ian Kimber and Dr. Rebecca Dearman at the University of Manchester  to research the potential of novel antiflammatory agents. This project will explore the feasibility of these approaches for the treatment of a range of skin disorders including atopic dermatitis, psoriasis and acne. The collaboration is supported through a BBSRC Sparking Impact award made to the University of Manchester.