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    Home > Active Ingredient News > Drugs Articles > Authoritative List: 10 start-ups to watch in 2020!

    Authoritative List: 10 start-ups to watch in 2020!

    • Last Update: 2020-11-28
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    The American Chemical Society(ACS) website has released a list of 10 high-profile start-ups for 2020.
    10 new start-ups on this year's list were carefully selected from more than 200 start-ups, according to C and EN, a company that has been selected.
    they are not only revolutionary chemical technologies, but are also committed to solving important problems related to human life.
    the companies on this list have discovered new ways to discover drugs, produced sustainable foods and materials, tried to harness quantum computing, and even wanted to simulate human noses.
    let's take a look at how these upstring companies are using chemical innovation for the benefit of humanity.
    Lycia Therapeutics: By dragging "bad" proteins into lysosomes, expanding the range of protein degradation Protein degradation is one of the hot topics in drug development, and most biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are currently developing protein degradation agents that use proteasomes in cells to degrade target proteins in cells.
    Lycia Therapeutics targets proteins that exist and act outside the cells.
    this protein accounts for about 40% of the total protein.
    Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, a chemical biologist at Stanford University, has designed an antibody that not only combines with target proteins, but also interacts with cell surface receptors to internalize the target protein and "drag" it into the lysosomes of the cells, where they are digested.
    called the antibody a lysosome-targeting chimera, LYTAC.
    Bertozzi's team has used this method to successfully degrade membrane proteins, including EGFR and PD-L1, as well as secretion proteins such as ApoE4, in experiments.
    June, the company received a $50 million investment from Versant Ventures to get out of hiding.
    company's goal is to use LYTAC technology to target extracellular and secretion proteins that are difficult to target with traditional small molecule inhibitors.
    Aryballe: For a long time, scientists have been trying to replicate the olfactory power of a human nose with a machine, but analysis based on gas chromatography and mass spectrometry requires not only large instruments, but also time-consuming data analysis.
    French start-up Aryballe combines bio-sensors, advanced optical technology and machine learning to keep odor analysis accurate while reducing the size of the instrument to as large as a watch.
    , developed by Aryballe, is only the size of a paper clip and has hundreds of different peptide chains embedded in about 50 square millimeters of silicon.
    when these peptides react with volatile organic compounds, they absorb a portion of the light.
    series of optical sensors detect changes in the absorption of light by peptides and upload signals to Aryballe's servers, where analysis of these signals can identify signal characteristics similar to known odors.
    technology can be used in the food processing industry, automotive industry, cosmetics industry and many other fields.
    Aryballe aims to develop a prototype of a sensor that can be loaded into a smartwatch next year.
    : Helping biotech companies screen microbes for mass production Many synthetic biology companies aim to bioengineer microorganisms so that they can produce useful compounds.
    , however, further fine-tuning of these bioengineered microorganisms so that they can grow on a large scale in bioreacters is key to commercializing these microbial products.
    's technology is designed to help synthetic biology companies optimize large-scale biomass more quickly.
    the company's thousands of bioreactive devices are connected to a computer system in the cloud, allowing researchers to conduct hundreds of culture experiments simultaneously, explore the best culture conditions and optimize microorganisms.
    Cygnal Therapeutics: Exploring the role of exosycient nerves in a variety of non-neurological disorders, Cygnal scientists believe that exosycient nerves not only transmit neural signals, but also play an important role in a variety of non-neurological diseases such as cancer and inflammation.
    , for example, many tumors not only secrete cytokines that attract blood vessel growth, but also attract large amounts of nerve growth inside the tumor.
    in the stomach cancer model, removing the nerves that dominate the tumor will slow the growth of the tumor.
    recent scientific studies have also found that pancreatic cancer tumors can obtain the nutrients they need to grow from nerves by attracting nerve dominance.
    Cygnal combines CRISPR screening technology, bio-information, and cell culture to identify potential small molecule drugs that interfere with the communication between diseased cells and nerves.
    already has three candidate therapies in the company's research and development pipeline.
    one of the small molecule drugs targeted to regulate synapses, which play an important role in cancer growth.
    target of another large molecule drug can help the nerves get close to or away from the tumor.
    : Turn old clothes into new fabrics When your T-shirts and jeans are worn out, isn't it just a way to throw them in the trash? For the founder of Evrnu, the answer is no.
    company is using technology to give these old fabrics a "second spring."
    Evrnu's technology removes pigments and other additives from cotton clothing, leaving only cellulose.
    these celluloses are purified and liquefy, from which new cellulose-based fabrics can be generated.
    usually cellulose-based artificial fabrics need to be produced from wood pulp.
    instead of cutting down trees to produce cellulose fabrics, Evrnu believes it is better to produce cellulose fabrics from the millions of tons of cotton cloth discarded in the world.
    Lilac Solutions: Using ion exchange to extract lithium compounds faster and easier, according to market research firm Roskill, global demand for lithium compounds will grow at an annual rate of 18% due to the popularity of lithium batteries.
    and if electric cars become more popular, that demand will increase.
    this demand means a significant increase in lithium compound capacity.
    current way to extract lithium compounds is to extract the salt water rich in lithium underground to dry in an open volatile pool and purify the remaining minerals.
    process can take months or even years.
    Lilac Solutions uses an innovative ion exchange material to collect lithium directly from salt water.
    this method can shorten the process of collecting lithium to about two hours.
    Natron Energy: Using Prussus blue pigments to design more secure and reliable batteries today, whether it's lithium batteries in mobile phones and computers, or lead-acid batteries made with older technologies, there are safety and environmental concerns.
    , which is based in the U.S., believes batteries made from Prussian blue offer a safer and more reliable option.
    study by Dr Colin Wessells, founder of
    Natron Energy, found that Prussian-blue crystal structures allow batteries made from this material to charge and discharge much faster than lithium batteries without the risk of explosion.
    the battery he developed was fully charged in just eight minutes.
    because the main components of batteries are iron and magnesium, they are more environmentally friendly than lithium batteries (which require rare earth metals) and lead-acid batteries (which contain a lot of toxic lead).
    , the battery has a long life span of only 1-2 years, while the battery developed by Natron Energy can be recharged more than 35,000 times and lasts up to five years.
    Protera: Using artificial intelligence rational design enzymes and other proteins Protera's technology platform is an artificial intelligence system called MADI, which combines language translation computational theory and in-depth learning to find the relationship between protein function and amino acid sequences and protein structures.
    researchers can enter the chemical reactions they want to catalytic, artificial intelligence systems can output DNA sequences, and the proteins they encode may complete the catalytic reaction.
    then used conventional biotechnology tools to generate and detect candidate proteins. another feature of
    MADI systems is the use of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) for computing, which allows artificial intelligence systems to process large amounts of computations in parallel, allowing computations that were previously done in a matter of weeks using traditional computers to be done in milliseconds.
    company's current products are designed to use innovative proteases to change the texture and shelf life of foods, avoid the use of additives, and make people eat healthier foods.
    Zapata Computing: Designing software quantum computing for the future of quantum computers is an emerging field in recent years, with traditional computer encoding of information through "0" and "1", while qubits (a.g. qubits) can represent both 1 and 0.
    scientists believe that this feature may allow quantum computers to more realistically represent quantum memetric features in molecular behavior, thus more accurately predicting chemical reactions and simulating the behavior of drug molecules.
    while quantum computers are still in their infancy, Zapata Computing's team believes that software development that matches quantum computers needs to be carried out simultaneously and not wait until the hardware matures.
    software platform, called Orquestra, developed by the company, allows users to create and adapt quantum computer workflows and detect and optimize them on different hardware.
    Ventus Therapeutics: Based on structural science, the innate immune system of the human body, an innovative drug targeting inflammatory small bodies and innate immune system proteins, is the first line of defense against microbial invasion, and proteins called NLRP3 are the early warning system on this line of defense.
    when activated by an invading microorganism, it can alter the protein structure, triggering the production of a large protein structure called inflammasome.
    inflamed small experience stimulates a series of cell "self-destruction" procedures to destroy cells infected by pathogens.
    , however, the overactive NLRP3 protein can be harmful to the body, and over the past decade scientists have found that it may be associated with a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, inflammatory bowel disease, non-alcoholic fatty hepatitis, and Parkinson's disease.
    NLRP3 has also become a hot target in drug research and development.
    over the past two years, BMS, Novartis and Roche have all swerved in this area through acquisitions of start-ups focused on developing NLRP3 targeted therapies.
    Ventus Therapeutics completed $60 million in financing this year and emerging from the stealth mode.
    company is using a new strategy to target NLRP3 and other proteins associated with the innurial immune system.
    usually use esopolytic screening to identify small molecular compounds that affect the NLRP3 signaling path.
    , however, does not directly provide evidence of how small molecular compounds interact with NLRP3.
    an important feature of NLRP3 is its tendency to alter the composition and gather together, a characteristic that is important for rapidly producing inflammatory small bodies, but also makes it difficult for drug developers to screen for proteins directly.
    Wu Wei (Photo: Harvard University's official website) One of the scientific founders of Ventus, a team at Harvard Medical School, has found a solution to this problem through protein engineering.
    her team was able to analyze the structure of NLRP3, as well as the composition of other proteins in the innate immune system, by altering amino acids in key interfaces on proteins.
    NLRP3-based structure, researchers are able to design specifically targeted NLRP3 small molecular compounds.
    This article is an English version of an article which is originally in the Chinese language on echemi.com and is provided for information purposes only. This website makes no representation or warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness ownership or reliability of the article or any translations thereof. If you have any concerns or complaints relating to the article, please send an email, providing a detailed description of the concern or complaint, to service@echemi.com. A staff member will contact you within 5 working days. Once verified, infringing content will be removed immediately.

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