Shares of Rubius Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:RUBY) soared by 85%, or $14.08, to trade midday at $30.51 on the word of first clinical, pharmacodynamic and tumor trafficking data from its ongoing phase I/II trial of RTX-240 in patients with advanced solid tumors. The Cambridge, Mass.-based firm also shared favorable trafficking data from one patient with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia in the second phase I arm of the experiment. Generated by the Rubius platform called Red, which generates red blood cells and genetically engineers them, RTX-240 is an allogeneic, off-the-shelf cellular therapy that simultaneously presents hundreds of thousands of copies of the co-stimulatory molecule 4-1BB ligand and IL-15TP (trans-presentation of IL-15 on IL-15R alpha) in their native forms. The approach is meant to stimulate the immune system by activating and expanding NK as well as memory T cells.

Elevatebio building out its cell and gene therapy platform with $525M series C

Elevatebio LLC, a startup providing infrastructure and leadership for a suite of nascent cell and gene therapy companies, has raised $525 million in series C financing to advance its work. Matrix Capital Management led the round, joined by new investors Softbank Vision Fund 2 and Fidelity Management and Research Co., plus existing investors. The financing follows a year-ago $170 million series B raise.

Intec and Decoy will merge to advance tumor and viral infections therapies

Intec Pharma Ltd. is merging with privately held Decoy Biosystems Inc. and the combined company will continue advancing Decoy’s immunotherapy technology for treating a variety of tumors and chronic viral infections. No up-front money was announced but once the merger is completed Decoy’s stockholders are expected to own about 75% of the combined company. Intec’s shareholders will own the remaining 25%. Decoy had a pre-IND meeting with the FDA and is set to file an IND in the second half of the year for a phase I study of its Decoy20 candidate in 2022 for treating solid tumors and lymphomas. In the meantime, Intec plans to sell its Accordion Pill business. Intec’s company stock (NASDAQ:NTEC) got a strong boost from the merger announcement, with shares trading 29% higher at midday.

Vaccine misinformation campaign a ‘dangerous precedent’

After working 24/7 to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in a historic timeframe and scale up manufacturing at an unprecedented rate, some vaccine manufacturers are now facing threats of compulsory licensing and what appears to be a concerted misinformation campaign akin to those used in the last two U.S. presidential campaigns, as well as in Great Britain and possibly in France. The campaign, allegedly engineered by a Russian group that was behind the political misinformation, is disparaging vaccines developed in the U.S. and Europe while promoting Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine in Spanish-speaking countries, Jeremy Levin, chair of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s executive committee, told BioWorld. “The behavior of Russian secret service in attempting to undermine the validity of other vaccines in favor of Sputnik V is a very dangerous precedent,” he said.

Multimorbid diseases cluster in predictable ways: study

A large-scale metabolomics study of blood samples from 11,000 people has identified common biological links among a number of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), opening up the possibility of countering multiple diseases simultaneously. The work involved profiling 1,014 metabolites to characterize pathways associated with, and across, 27 NCDs. It picked up 640 significant metabolite-disease associations, including 420 metabolites shared between at least two NCDs. Taken as whole, the study provides an “unprecedented reference map of human metabolism,” the researchers wrote in their paper, which was published in the March 11, 2021, online issue of Nature Medicine.

Clinical data up 30% over last year; a fifth focused on COVID-19

After a year of intense biopharma research, an increasing arsenal of answers is bolstering the fight against COVID-19. The percentage of phase I, II and III clinical readouts and other news for pandemic vaccines and therapeutics continues to climb, with 66 entries in February focused on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, representing about 21% of the total items reported. The amount of data tracked by BioWorld rose slightly in February to 307 items, from 295 in January, which was the lowest amount in several months. Compared with February of 2020, however, it is an increase of about 30%.

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