Heather McKenzie

Heather McKenzie

Senior Editor

Heather McKenzie is a professional journalist with more than five years experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Since joining BioSpace, she has written more than 200 features and breaking news articles with a particular focus in neuroscience and gene therapy. She has also traveled internationally to cover global biotech hubs such as Israel. In previous roles, she has covered current affairs, sports, education and politics. She previously spent eight years as a senior content producer for executive-level business conferences in the pharma/biotech, legal, energy and business strategy sectors. In her free time, Heather enjoys creative writing, spending time with family and playing with her energetic Russian Blue cat Roofus. She hails from Toronto and has also lived in Chicago and Chesapeake, Virginia. You can reach her at heather.mckenzie@biospace.com.

FDA
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had several approvals this week. Read on to see what the regulatory agency gave the go-ahead to.
As we eagerly look ahead to 2021, BioSpace spoke to four biotechs hoping to seize this opportunity in the first wave of COVID-19 vaccines and therapies – or make an impact in the second.
On Wednesday, Sage Therapeutics and Samsung Biologics announced that they had found just that in their new chief executive officers.
On Tuesday, Novartis announced the first interpretable results from its Phase III KESTREL study of humanized single-chain antibody fragment (scFv) Beovu, demonstrating significant improvement in central subfield thickness in Diabetic Macular Edema.
Mergers and acquisitions are a well-known fact in the life sciences industry, and anyone working within the sector knows to expect them at any time.
In a shining moment that signaled hope for hemophilia B patients, uniQure presented data on Tuesday showing that its gene therapy treatment, etranacogene dezaparvovec (AMT-061), substantially increased production of the blood-clotting protein factor IX in nearly all pivotal Phase III HOPE-B trial participants.
With the expected Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines providing hope that the COVID-19 pandemic will soon be resolved, 2021 is going to need a new primary healthcare campaign. Could it come from the field of neuroscience?
BioSpace spoke with a few companies that have some ingenious ideas at different stages of preclinical and clinical development.
Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) have been at the forefront of the national conversation during this momentous year, so BioSpace felt it imperative to reach out to employees in the life sciences industry on this subject in our wide-ranging Fall 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Survey.
Swiss medtech company Abionic SA announced that they have developed the first COVID-19 severity test, the cSOFA (Covid Sequential Organ Failure Assessment) score, to help doctors quickly and accurately triage cases that come into emergency rooms.
As the dose of Sutro Biopharma’s ovarian cancer drug, STRO-002, increased in an ongoing Phase I dose-escalation trial, survival rates have also increased.
Therapies developed using E3 ligase proteins will get a potent infusion, as AbbVie combines its commercialization expertise with Frontier Medicine’s proprietary chemoproteomics platform to develop potentially efficacious therapies for difficult-to-drug protein targets.
As if attempting to steal hard-won research wasn’t bad enough, hackers are now hitting people where it really hurts – with e-documents containing malicious code embedded in false offers of employment.
FDA
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to a COVID-19 test developed by Roche that measures antibodies within the blood.
Physicians are worried that a lack of transparency about side effects might prevent people from going back for a second dose, or even getting the first one.