Highlighting innovation

The human race has utilised psychedelic drugs to explore realms of expanded consciousness for many millennia. However, as 21st century societies enter a growing mental health crisis, could mushrooms containing psilocybin supplement pre-existing therapies and provide new treatments for the mental health conditions so many of us battle with?

July 22, 2021

Retinol, Niacinamide, Salicylic acid. These “bioactive” ingredients have taken the skincare world by storm, trending all over YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. They claim to alter the way in which your skin functions on a molecular level to improve its appearance…which all sounds incredibly scientific and convincing. If you use Google to research these ingredients, it appears that every website, from Healthline to Vogue, is in agreement to their purported benefit. However, the evidence within scientific literature for bioactive ingredients is somewhat lacking. So, where is the ‘clinically proven’ evidence?!

July 15, 2021

In October 2014, two open community labs in the San Francisco Bay Area entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s prestigious international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) synthetic biology competition with their ‘Real Vegan Cheese’ (RVC) project and went on to win a gold medal. Counter Culture Labs and BioCurious collaborate on this grassroots, non-profit project with the goal of producing cow’s cheese without using cows.

May 28, 2021

Drug discovery and development are lengthy processes for even the most established Healthcare companies. Despite advancements in technology and ever more accessible research, commercialising new therapeutics still requires a significant amount of time and capital. Given these caveats, Healthcare companies dedicate significant resources to identify high potential drug targets within the cell. However, certain biomolecular components have proved challenging to build robust therapeutics for. Here, we explore why the Ras family of proteins are such attractive drug targets and why some Healthcare companies still have skin in the game despite four decades of failed attempts.

April 13, 2021

Anticoagulants are an essential class of medications that are primarily used to prevent thrombotic events in individuals classified as at high risk of blood clot formation. Several risk factors can increase an individual’s risk of developing a blood clot, including a previous history of blood clots (venous thromboembolism), a previous history of myocardial infarction or stroke, cardiac valve replacement, genetic clotting disorders and comorbidities such as atrial fibrillation.

Matthew McCann

March 11, 2021

In this interview, I talk with Stephen Sykes about what founders have to keep in mind, from a legal point of view, when starting their company. Stephen is a lawyer at The Sykes Partnership LLP who specialises in environmental law.

February 25, 2021

Ageing is simply defined as ‘growing older’. ‘Growing older’ is something I believe many of us have accepted as our natural state, as all living things arise fresh, then age, weaken and finally die and that is largely considered as just the way things go. However, some believe ageing entails far more than just ‘growing older’, especially when looking from a health-focused perspective...

February 3, 2021

The scale of venture innovation today is having a profound effect on many aspects of our lives, from our health, our productivity in our environment. Start-ups can have a positive impact on the economy and society but there is a risk that there will be a loss in costs due to ineffective product development, an ineffective team, negative externalities and the continuously changing technology landscape.

January 14, 2021

The rising tide of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is recognised as one of the major hurdles of the 21st century, being predicted to cause more deaths worldwide than cancer within the next 25 years [5]. Our overuse of antibiotic agents is driving the evolution of novel antimicrobial-resistant bacterial strains across both agricultural and healthcare sectors. Humanity is fighting a losing battle against billions of years of bacterial evolution. To keep in this fight, we need to come up with more innovative solutions within the field of antimicrobial biotechnology. 

Aonghus Topham

Founded in 2020 by neuroscientist Tim Routledge and marketing leader Tim Wade, Biostress Lab Ltd set sail from Wakefield, England, with a mission to revolutionise workplace well-being. 

Omar Ajaz