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How CRISPR and HiBiT can accelerate drug discovery

CRISPR has been called one of the most exciting developments in genetic engineering. It is opening up new possibilities in medicine, particularly for discovering new types of drugs for genetic diseases and new ways of repairing and replacing organs and tissue in regenerative medicine. In an interview with HBI, Philip Hargreaves, Director of Strategic Marketing & Business Development at Promega UK, the UK  branch of US biotech company Promega, spoke about how CRISPR, when combined with Promega’s innovative HiBiT technology, can accelerate the drug discovery process.

CVC DIF acquires medneo UK

Netherlands-based infrastructure fund CVC DIF (formerly DIF Capital Partners) has acquired medneo UK, a UK-based imaging services company.

Assura buys Northwest’s £500 million UK hospital portfolio

Primary care-focused UK REIT Assura has bought the entirety of multinational hospital-focused REIT Northwest Healthcare Properties REIT’s UK portfolio. The portfolio comprises 14 hospitals with an average of 36 beds each and is worth £500 million (~€583 million).

Interview: Duncan Leggat, Cymphony

Cymphony is a UK company that provides customer communications solutions such as telephone answering and appointment booking to private healthcare providers. In an interview with HBI, Duncan Leggat, Cymphony’s Finance Director, argued that high quality, personalised customer service is an essential part of a good healthcare service, and that, for providers focused on the premium/private-pay part of the market, the good old fashioned telephone is generally the most effective tool for achieving this.

Period tracking app Flo reaches unicorn status

London-based Flo Health, a menstrual cycle and ovulation tracking app, has raised over $200 million in a Series C round led by General Atlantic, a New-York based private equity firm. The funding values Flo at over $1 billion, making it the “first purely digital consumer women’s health app to achieve unicorn status”, as well as the first European femtech company to.

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