SD-101 (Zorblesia™) is the First Topical Therapy Developed to Treat Wounds and Lesions Across the Entire Skin Surface of All Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) Subtypes

This second consecutive nomination places our company and focus on Epidermolysis Bullosa among a select group of visionaries shaping the future of healthcare and medical innovation.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C., Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Paradigm Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on transforming care for rare diseases, today announced it has been named a finalist for the 2026 Prix Galien USA “Best Start-Up” Award. This marks the second consecutive year the company has been nominated for this preeminent honor, following its recognition as a nominee in 2025.

The Prix Galien USA award is America’s premier prize in bioscience innovation and is widely regarded as the “Nobel Prize of biopharmaceutical research.” Managed by The Galien Foundation, the awards reward excellence in scientific innovations that address significant unmet medical needs, demonstrate clinical relevance, and show profound potential to improve human health. The 2026 Prix Galien USA Awards ceremony will take place on October 29, 2026, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

“The Prix Galien USA nomination for a second consecutive year reflects Paradigm’s significant progress in Epidermolysis Bullosa and highlights the strength of our science, the execution of our team, and our continued commitment to developing a therapy designed to treat the entire skin surface of pediatric and adult EB patients across all three main subtypes,” said Robert Ryan, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Paradigm Therapeutics.

“There is a tremendous need for novel whole-skin surface treatment options for treating the debilitating skin effects across all patients with EB. We are excited about the opportunity to complete the development activities for SD-101 (Zorblesia™) and to move forward on a path toward registration. Our team is working passionately to provide patients with a new therapeutic alternative where whole-body treatment options are severely limited. Paradigm’s goal is to provide this therapy to patients on a global basis, and we are working in parallel with potential partners to achieve this as quickly as possible.”

SD-101 (Zorblesia™) represents a paradigm shift in care as the first EB treatment to receive the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Breakthrough Therapy designation. The therapy has also been granted Rare Pediatric Disease designation and Orphan Drug designation by the FDA, as well as previous Orphan Drug designation from the European Commission (EC). Upon regulatory approval, Paradigm will be eligible to receive a Priority Review Voucher (PRV).

About Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB)

Epidermolysis Bullosa is a rare, devastating genetic disorder causing very fragile skin that leads to severe skin blistering and open wounds often beginning at birth. There are no approved therapies that were developed to treat the entire skin surface of patients across all subtypes of EB patients, including wounds and lesional skin, which affects children and adults throughout their lifetimes. EB is a chronic disease, potentially disfiguring, and in some cases fatal. There are many genetic and symptomatic variations of EB, but all forms share the common symptom of fragile skin that blisters and tears, sometimes from the slightest friction or trauma.

About SD-101 (Zorblesia™)

SD-101 (Zorblesia ™) is a topical cream that has demonstrated potential to provide improvement in treating the severe skin disruptions seen in patients across all EB subtypes. Results from completed Phase II and Phase III trials evaluated SD-101 in 217 pediatric and adult patients across the three major EB subtypes: Simplex, Dystrophic, and Junctional. In these clinical studies, the topical cream was applied daily over the entire body—including to children as young as 28 days old—for three months. The data suggests a broad benefit in treating lesions and wounds across the entire body’s skin surface while maintaining a favorable long-term safety profile. SD-101 (Zorblesia ™) is a topical cream that requires no special handling and can be stored at room temperature.

About Paradigm Therapeutics, Inc.

Paradigm Therapeutics, Inc. is a privately held, clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative therapies to address critical medical needs in the treatment of rare diseases. Paradigm’s main focus is the treatment of Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB). SD-101 (Zorblesia ^TM ), its leading therapy for the treatment of skin effects in patients with Epidermolysis Bullosa, has completed Phase II and Phase III clinical trials. A confirmatory two month study is being conducted in pediatric patients 28 days to 12 years old in patients across all EB subtypes. 

Explore Our Therapy: Learn more about our EB treatment at paradigmtherapeutics.com

Forward Looking Statement

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including: our dependence on third parties for the development, regulatory approval and successful commercialization of our products, the inherent risk of failure in developing product candidates based on new technologies, risks associated with the costs of clinical development efforts, as well as other risks. Actual results may differ materially from those projected. These forward-looking statements represent our judgment as of the date of the release. Paradigm disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Company Contact

Dr. Robert Ryan

Chief Executive Officer

rryan@paradigmtherapeutics.com

(919)-274-0703

The 83rd edition becomes the largest ever held at Fiera Milano Rho: ten exhibition halls, over 300,000 square metres, 754 exhibitors and 2,120 brands from 52 countries. From 3 to 8 November, with the first two days reserved for press and trade professionals.

MILAN, Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — “Always the first time. A new discovery every year.” Under this slogan, EICMA unveiled its 83rd edition today in Milan, setting a new milestone in the history of the International Two-Wheeler Exhibition.

For the first time since moving to Fiera Milano Rho, EICMA will occupy ten exhibition halls, one more than in 2025, making it the largest edition ever held at the venue. The exhibition will cover over 300,000 square metres, welcoming 754 exhibitors and 2,120 brands from 52 countries.

The figures confirm EICMA’s global leadership: 74% of participating brands are international, while approximately 30% of direct exhibitors are either returning companies or first-time participants. This remarkable growth reinforces EICMA’s strategic role as a global platform for business, innovation and motorcycle culture.

The 2026 edition will offer visitors an unprecedented programme of exhibitions, racing, entertainment and immersive experiences.

Among the highlights is Speed Legends, an extraordinary exhibition celebrating the history of MotoGP’s premier class. Developed through the EICMA.SHIFT UP partnership with MotoGP, the exhibition will feature over 30 historic racing motorcycles alongside the five MotoGP bikes competing in 2026, complemented by interactive experiences and a dedicated Gaming Arena.

The Dakar Rally also returns through the renewed partnership with ASO, bringing historic and modern rally motorcycles and an official Dakar container to Hall 22.

Outside the halls, MotoLive will once again deliver spectacular racing and entertainment across more than 60,000 square metres. Highlights include twin-cylinder motorcycle competitions, Freestyle Motocross, Trial performances featuring special guest *Toni Bou, and the Champions Charity Race Legend, bringing together motorsport icons including Troy Bayliss, Marco Melandri and Stefan Everts.

Visitors will also enjoy free test rides at Y.U.M. – Your Urban Mobility, featuring over 40 vehicles, while EICMA Adventouring and the Start-up Area, supported by the Italian Trade Agency, will showcase adventure tourism and future mobility solutions.

“Every edition brings something new while preserving the excitement of a first-time experience,” said EICMA President Pietro Meda. “Our mission is to keep surprising visitors, connecting generations and creating value for the entire industry.”

EICMA CEO Paolo Magri highlighted the exhibition’s international strength: “These figures demonstrate EICMA’s continuing ability to attract investment, welcome new companies and represent the global motorcycle industry.”

A comprehensive mobility plan, developed with ATM, Trenord and the Municipality of Milan, will facilitate access through public transport and approximately 15,000 free parking spaces.

EICMA 2026 runs from 3 to 8 November, with press and trade days on 3–4 November and public opening from 5–8 November.

Tickets are available at www.eicma.it.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Eleven new 550-horsepower workover rigs are being deployed for use by North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), marking the first time in more than 15 years that new mobile repair-and-maintenance systems will operate in Venezuelan oil fields.

In addition to the workover rigs, two new 1,500-horsepower drilling rigs arrived on October 7 for NABEP’s operations with more equipment expected to arrive soon.

The new equipment complements NABEP’s steady ramp-up of operations and production. Separately, the company has purchased 60 rigs, 30 steam boilers and 70 pieces of heavy machinery, giving it the largest heavy-equipment fleet in the country.

“NABEP is making serious and steady progress in increasing oil production. Every rig that arrives in Venezuela brings us closer to reaching our production goals and revitalizing our country’s economy,” said NABEP CEO Alejandro Betancourt. “The challenge ahead is large, but there is no better partner than the U.S. government. We look forward to continuing to share our progress in the months ahead.”

The new equipment purchases follow the August 2026 agreement between NABEP and the U.S. Departments of State and War to significantly expand oil production in Venezuela. NABEP controls the rights to commercialize more than 65 billion barrels of P1 oil reserves in Venezuela and plans to invest nearly $100 billion to increase production capacity and improve oil-and-gas infrastructure. NABEP is rapidly expanding its operations in Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt. Its near-term goal is to increase production to more than 1 million barrels of oil per day.

NABEP has scaled its production from approximately 18,000 barrels per day to more than 200,000 in two years through roughly $1 billion in company-funded investment. The company employs 5,000 people and supports 10,000 contract employees in Venezuela.

About North American Blue Energy Partners

North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) is an independent oil exploration and production company operating in North and Latin America, with offices in Caracas, Maracaibo and Lechería. NABEP is committed to the responsible development of energy resources, the safety of its people and the prosperity of the communities where it operates. www.nabep.net

Media contact: press@nabep.com

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Toptal, the world’s largest talent network of highly skilled domain experts, today announced the launch of ExpertCrowd, a platform for training and improving AI models and systems through RLHF, RL data generation, data labeling, and model evaluation. ExpertCrowd combines its advanced platform for AI model development and testing with Toptal’s global network of specialized talent to help frontier AI labs, innovative enterprises, and fast-growing startups build more accurate and capable AI models and systems.

The platform enables organizations to move beyond generalized crowdsourcing and data annotation and apply highly specialized human judgment to develop and improve AI applications and models across industries including financial services, healthcare, legal, biotechnology, cybersecurity, and more. ExpertCrowd is powered by Toptal’s global talent network, with more than 30,000 specialized domain experts across 140+ countries, including more than 2,000 AI and big data specialists, 12,000 professionals with advanced degrees, and 1,000 PhD-level AI specialists, available on demand.

ExpertCrowd matches thousands of specialized experts to AI alignment and training projects instantaneously, enabling organizations to rapidly scale such projects with confidence. Its AI-driven sourcing engine was developed in-house by Toptal’s AI research team, composed of more than a dozen PhDs and researchers from leading institutions such as Harvard, EPFL, and the University of Liège, using 15 years of Toptal’s proprietary data in sourcing, screening, and matching highly skilled domain experts.

Offering multimodal annotation with customizable workflows and live project tracking, ExpertCrowd provides real-time progress updates as domain experts do the actual work. AI researchers applying GRPO, PPO, and other RL techniques have leveraged ExpertCrowd’s platform to further the development of their AI models and systems.

Prior to today’s official launch, ExpertCrowd generated over $5 million in recurring revenue from work with frontier and neo labs, as well as companies including Scale AI, Sterling Labs, Vetto, and other innovative startups that service frontier labs.

As part of the launch, ExpertCrowd has developed and published the ExpertCrowd-SWE benchmark, which evaluates SOTA AI coding agents on previously unseen issues. The ExpertCrowd-SWE benchmark exposes the most significant deficiencies in model capability relative to any other currently published SWE benchmark. ExpertCrowd-SWE spans 87 codebases in 11 programming languages. Engineers from Toptal’s talent network led the development of this benchmark and authored every task as well as each grading rubric. Researchers, including several PhDs in various areas of artificial intelligence from Toptal’s AI team, reviewed and assessed the benchmark’s methodology and results.

“The fact that our SWE benchmark results expose the most deficiencies relative to any other published benchmark on leading models such as Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 demonstrates our ability to push frontier AI forward,” said Taso Du Val, founder and CEO of Toptal.

“Developing frontier AI models requires more than just powerful compute. It requires specialized human expertise to train, evaluate, and continuously improve these models. ExpertCrowd brings together the technology and domain expertise required to build and train AI models and systems for executing complex, real-world tasks with precision.”

About Toptal

Toptal is the world’s largest talent network of highly skilled domain experts, connecting businesses with the top 3% of freelance talent on demand. Toptal was ranked the #1 Most Reliable Professional Services Company in America by Newsweek and Statista, based on an independent survey of more than 2,400 decision-makers at Fortune 500s. Founded in 2010, Toptal has served more than 35,000 clients across more than 140 countries. For more information, please visit Toptal.com.

Contact

Luiz Baia
SVP of Marketing Strategy
luiz.baia@toptal.com

Key Takeaways

• Clinical trials require guard railed AI that’s purpose built for the regulated industry that has high human stakes and required audit trails.
• Sofia helps make complex, fast-moving trial data more accessible to study teams who manage large volumes of time-sensitive work.
• Study teams can get faster answers and take confident action. Sofia goes beyond information retrieval and can execute authorized system actions on behalf of busy users while maintaining the permissions and audit trails required in clinical trials.

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa., Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Suvoda, a global clinical trial technology company, today announced that Sofia, its AI assistant on the Suvoda Platform, is ready for all new clinical trials using Suvoda RTSM/IRT or Suvoda eCOA. Sofia gives sponsors, CROs, and sites faster access to trial data and the ability to act on it—through AI built for regulated clinical research.

“Sofia handles the routine operational work so that sponsors, CROs, and sites can focus on the decisions that require their judgment,” said E.K. Koh, Chief Product Officer, Suvoda. “We built it with the rigor clinical trials demand because in this environment there is no room for a wrong answer.”

Clinical trial teams manage high volumes of time-sensitive work. They track drug inventory, review shipment details, monitor patient visit schedules, and manage questionnaire compliance across global sites. Checking those data streams can pull attention away from patients and judgment-intensive decisions. Sofia is designed to change that equation. The goal is to make complex, fast-moving trial data more accessible so teams can focus their attention where human expertise matters most.

Sofia launched first with early adopter companies that helped shape it before today’s expansion to all new Suvoda RTSM/IRT and eCOA trials.

“As an early adopter, we were impressed by how quickly our teams incorporated Sofia into their daily workflow,” said Dawn Sorenson, Director, IRT Center of Excellence, Daiichi Sankyo. “The platform’s ability to summarize documentation and answer operational questions makes information more accessible and reduces the time spent navigating systems or pulling reports. Tasks that once required multiple steps can now be addressed through a simple conversation, creating meaningful efficiency gains across study operations.”

Built differently than general-purpose AI

Some AI tools apply a large language model to a problem and hope the output is accurate. Sofia is built differently. Conversational AI maps each question’s intent to Suvoda’s validated knowledge space, where subject matter experts have translated expert guidance into validated skills. Those skills execute against live study data within a governed framework that protects the study blind and creates the audit trail clinical trials require. Today, Sofia supports more than 40 topics and is expanding continuously.

From information to action

Sofia does not stop with just answering questions. For authorized users, Sofia can execute system actions on their behalf in a single conversation. Before acting, Sofia summarizes what it will do and asks for confirmation. Every action is attributed to the requesting user, governed by existing roles and permissions, and captured in a full audit trail.

Sofia recently received the PM360 Innovation Award in the Artificial Intelligence category, reflecting the pragmatic yet innovative approach Suvoda took to create Sofia. Early adopters were instrumental to creating a system that really works for what study teams need.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How does Sofia handle data privacy and security?
A: Sofia operates with a zero-data retention policy, never uses customer data to train public models, and scopes every user’s access to exactly what they are already authorized to see within the Suvoda Platform.

Q: How is Sofia different from a general chatbot?
A: Sofia is a purpose-built, deterministic AI assistant that executes Suvoda-authored expert instructions against live clinical trial data within a governed framework, and it can also take authorized system actions on a user’s behalf after obtaining confirmation from the user.

Q: What languages does Sofia support?
A: Sofia responds in the language of the question, supporting global sponsor, CRO, and site teams operating across time zones and regions.

Media Contact:

Robin Abadía

Director, External Communications, Suvoda 

marketing@suvoda.com

For more Suvoda news, visit our newsroom.

SmartSens presents automotive-grade image sensors and integrated imaging-and-computing solutions for a range of vehicle applications

BARCELONA, Spain, Oct. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — At AutoSens Europe 2026, held from September 22 to 24 at La Farga de L’Hospitalet in Barcelona, SmartSens, a technologically advanced supplier of CMOS image sensors and the No.3 player in global CIS market shipments in 2025, showcased its automotive-grade (AT) image sensor portfolio, alongside solutions that support forward-facing cameras, 360-degree surround-view systems, driver monitoring systems (DMS) and occupant monitoring systems (OMS). Through architectural innovation that deeply integrates imaging and computing, the company is helping to advance global intelligent driving technologies.

At the exhibition, SmartSens’ Automotive Business Group held in-depth product and business exchanges with multiple global partners. Meanwhile, Toby Zou, co-general manager of SmartSens’ Automotive Business Group, delivered a keynote address at a technical forum held alongside the exhibition.

SmartSens also debuted integrated forward-facing camera module solutions powered by the M2 SoC from its subsidiary Flyingchip in a live demonstration that drew significant attention from attendees. The module solutions use the 8.3MP automotive-grade sensor SC860AT for forward-view imaging and the SC233AT for DMS, enabling vehicles to closely monitor their surroundings and maintain acute awareness in demanding lighting conditions. The sensor suites also deliver consistent image quality and reliable inference across side-view, rear-view and in-cabin OMS cameras, as well as camera-based rearview mirror systems.

The OMS solution pairs the SC533AT, a 5MP automotive-grade image sensor, with Flyingchip’s M1 SoC. SC533AT delivers exceptional results with high sensitivity, low noise and high shutter efficiency, offering the image clarity and accuracy required for reliable operation. The image sensor application supports passenger and child presence detection, the detection of pets and objects left in the vehicle, as well as in-cabin photography and video conferencing.

For surround-view applications, SmartSens presented a 360-degree solution based on the 3MP SC360AT. Under extreme lighting conditions such as backlighting and glare from oncoming headlights at night, it suppresses overexposure and retains complete shadow details, improving safety and convenience in parking and narrow-road passing scenarios.

On the second day of the show, at the technical forum held alongside the exhibition, Toby Zou was invited to deliver a keynote address, “Empowering Intelligent Driving: Advancing High Dynamic Range and High Resolution in Automotive CIS.”

Zou noted that the continued growth of new energy vehicles worldwide and the automotive industry’s progression toward Level 3 and Level 4 automated driving are making the imaging performance of automotive CMOS image sensors in complex scenarios central to system perception. His keynote covered pixel architecture, HDR, global-shutter technology and system-level integration, and examined how closer integration of imaging and computing can advance automotive vision across a broad range of use cases. He also presented SmartSens’ CIS portfolio as an integrated platform for next-generation vehicle perception application.

SmartSens combines its flexible sensor integration, advanced image processing and innovative automotive sensing technologies. The unified offerings give automakers and Tier 1 suppliers access to flexible, reliable imaging solutions designed for production-scale deployment in advanced driving systems.