By Brian Finrow, Aleks Engel and Srinivas Akkaraju │This piece was originally published at STAT NEWS on March 15th, 2023 STAT’s Matthew Herper struck an industry nerve when he wrote that the drug development industry is “not prepared for the next wave of biotech innovation.” His report ends on…

Thoughts on the journey from bench to bedside for patients at risk of C. difficile infection — By Jake Siegel and Brian Finrow Today we announced several milestones in the clinical development of LMN-201, Lumen’s orally delivered biologic cocktail to prevent C. difficile infection (CDI). The big headline: the FDA has greenlit Phase 2 studies of LMN-201. Soon we will start enrolling hundreds of newly diagnosed CDI…

Lumen’s new paper in Nature Biotechnology describes how it harnessed spirulina as a factory and delivery vehicle for oral protein therapeutics. Here’s how the journey began. — By Jake Siegel (originally published at Nature.com here) Spirulina is stubborn. Jim Roberts thought he knew what he was getting into when he ordered a few vials of frozen spirulina culture for the lab. Chock-full of protein and easily grown at vast scale, the blue-green algae made an ideal candidate for a biomanufacturing…

Thoughts on Lumen’s new collaboration to fight flu with inhaled antibodies — By Jake Siegel and Brian Finrow Last week we announced a new collaboration with Aridis Pharmaceuticals to develop an intranasal passive vaccine to fight flu. We have written before about our efforts to use our unique manufacturing platform to develop edible antibody drugs for a wide range of infectious diseases…

A new tool for making high-potency antibody drugs — By Brian Finrow and Jim Roberts We just released a paper on the preclinical development of LMN-201, Lumen’s orally delivered cocktail of therapeutic proteins for preventing C. difficile infection. In the news release we also shared that LMN-201 met its primary endpoint in Cohort 1 of the ongoing Phase 1…

The “respiratory” disease strikes many organ systems, including the GI tract. Lumen is testing the world’s first oral therapy directed at this neglected aspect of Covid-19. — By Brian Finrow and Jim Roberts Today, Lumen announced significant new federal funding covering a Phase 2 clinical trial of our Covid-19 product, LMN-301. It is, we believe, the world’s first clinical program directed specifically at the GI manifestations of Covid-19. Like everything Lumen Bio does, LMN-301 is unique!

How Google’s AI experts are helping advance Lumen Bio’s unique biologics platform — By Brian Finrow and Jim Roberts Today Lumen announced the first results of our long-running collaboration with Google’s world-beating AI/ML (machine learning) team. The gist: advanced algorithms helped us navigate a dizzying amount of data to double the productivity of cGMP biologics manufacturing platform. The manuscript, titled “Machine Learning Optimization…

Reflecting on Lumen’s new collaboration with Novo Nordisk — By Brian Finrow and Jim Roberts Today Lumen announced a new collaboration with Novo Nordisk to explore new treatments for cardiometabolic diseases. We couldn’t be more thrilled. Cardiometabolic disease — a cluster of related conditions that includes obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease — afflicts hundreds of millions of people worldwide…

Highlights from Lumen’s big new collaboration with CARB-X, A-Alpha, Tufts University, and the US Naval Medical Research Center — By Brian Finrow and Jim Roberts Delhi belly. Montezuma’s Revenge. The Aztec two-step. Here in the West, we like to slap whimsical names on traveler’s diarrhea. For those of us blessed with ready access to food and sanitary infrastructure, these diseases are a minor inconvenience.