Innovotex Inc. has acquired an exclusive and perpetual license, facilitated by the Discovery to Impact group at the University of Texas at Austin, to an innovative discovery platform and corresponding patent portfolio to identify and design therapeutic candidates for a range of solid tumor indications.
Verismo Therapeutics Inc. has received U.S. orphan drug designation from the FDA for Synkir-110 for the treatment of patients with mesothelin-expressing mesotheliomas.
Kancera AB has shown that its Fractalkine-blocking candidate drug may increase the efficacy of platinum-based chemotherapy and reduce tumor growth in animal models of ovarian cancer.
Seecure Taiwan Co. Ltd. has disclosed compounds reported to be useful for the treatment or diagnosis of cancer, autoimmune diseases and atherosclerosis.
The PKMYT1 kinase has emerged as a promising therapeutic target for CCNE1-amplified cancers, after a recently reported genome-scale CRISPR/Cas9-based screen identified its inhibition as synthetically lethal for CCNE1 amplification.
H-Cyte Inc. has completed its acquisition of Jantibody, a novel cancer immunotherapeutic agent that has demonstrated promising efficacy in controlling ovarian cancer and mesothelioma in preclinical models.
VBL Therapeutics Inc.’s phase III study of its gene therapy, ofranergene obadenovec, in treating ovarian cancer missed its primary endpoints, prompting the company to discontinue the trial and investors to pull way back. Shares of the Tel Aviv, Israel, and New York-based company’s stock (NASDAQ:VBLT) plunged 79% on July 20 to close at 43 cents per share. The $1.62 per share drop in value made it a penny stock. VBL shares hit their high on Nov. 8, closing at $2.53 each. Top-line data for ofra-vec, also known as VB-111, showed no statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival or overall survival.
Shares in Zentalis Pharmaceuticals Inc. rose sharply after Pfizer Inc. invested $25 million and struck a deal to catalyze development of the company’s WEE1 inhibitor ZN-c3, an oral drug designed to make cancer cells self-destruct.
Inoviq Ltd. and The University of Queensland (UQ) are expanding a collaboration to develop an exosome-based ovarian cancer screening test. Researchers from UQ identified and validated exosomal protein and micro-RNA (miRNA) biomarkers that when combined in its OCRF-7 algorithm showed more than 90% accuracy to detect stages I and II ovarian cancer in an independent 500-sample retrospective case-control study, Inoviq CEO Leearne Hinch told BioWorld.