Drug Discovery & Development’s Brian Buntz clinches 2023 Azbee national gold award

Our own pharma editor, Brian Buntz, has won national gold in the 2023 Azbee Awards of Excellence. The accolade from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) recognized Buntz’s coverage for Drug Discovery & Development, which was highlighted in the sister print publication of Medical Design & Outsourcing.

ASBPE is a widely recognized professional association for individuals involved in the B2B media industry. Since its founding in 1964, ASBPE has sought to help set high standards in the industry.

A string of other WTWH Media publications also won Azbee awards, including Medical Design & Outsourcing (MDO), Design World, Solar Power World and Restaurant Business. MDO received five national and nine regional Azbee Awards, including two national golds.

The award for the pharma feature was granted for a late 2021 interview with Eric Merle. Merle is the chief business innovation officer at Genoskin, a company that uses huma…

Read more
  • 0

Inside Genoskin’s quest to use human skin scraps to accelerate drug research

“How do you maintain human skin alive so that you can generate data from what would otherwise be trash?” asked Eric Merle, chief business innovation officer of Salem, Massachusetts–based Genoskin. “We work with surgical discards.”

Founded a decade ago, Genoskin collects human skins from cosmetic surgeries such as face-lifts and abdominal surgeries that would otherwise be waste to foster research on new drugs and cosmetics. 

“Many people worldwide are undergoing plastic surgery, yielding tissue,” Merle said. 

Keeping the skin preserved requires “pretty tight logistics,” Merle said. “We have the logistics of an organ transplant company.” 

The MANTIS spatial biology imaging platform for skin immunology. Image courtesy of Genoskin.

The resultant skin models preserve the characteristics of real human skin. 

The company has a variety of product types. One is HypoSkin, an alternative to …

Read more
  • 0