A pricing standoff between Pfizer Inc. and the Australian government has left women with advanced breast cancer facing tens of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs, underscoring a growing global trend in which access to life-extending drugs is increasingly being shaped by pricing negotiations rather than clinical merit.

Researchers from Sanofi SA have detailed the development of a next-generation HER2-targeting T-cell engager (TCE) to increase selectivity for HER2-low tumor cells, while minimizing its effects on normal tissues expressing physiologic levels of HER2.

A pricing standoff between Pfizer Inc. and the Australian government has left women with advanced breast cancer facing tens of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs, underscoring a growing global trend in which access to life-extending drugs is increasingly being shaped by pricing negotiations rather than clinical merit.

The discovery and development of new histone lysine acetyltransferase KAT6 inhibitors is a significant advancement in the management of breast cancer. Investigators from Olema Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Aurigene Oncology Ltd. recently presented data for their KAT6 inhibitor, OP-3136, as an approach for breast cancer.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology, researchers from The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University and The First People’s Hospital of Qinzhou (China) investigated the expression pattern, molecular mechanisms and clinical relevance of GALNT1 in breast cancer.

Telomir Pharmaceuticals Inc. has submitted an IND application to the U.S. FDA for its lead candidate, Telomir-1 (Telomir-Zn), for the treatment of advanced and metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Telomir-1 is a first-in-class metal-modulating epigenetic agent designed to restore transcriptional control in tumor cells by targeting intracellular iron-zinc homeostasis.

Facing increasing competition to PI3Kα inhibitor Piqray (alpelisib) in breast cancer, Novartis AG looks to bolster its pipeline with next-generation programs, including phase I/II-stage candidate SNV-4818, by way of a potential $3 billion deal with Synnovation Therapeutics LLC.

HORMA domain-containing protein 1 (HORMAD1) is a protein that promotes meiotic recombination and its expression is usually restricted to germ-line cells, although it has been shown to be actively expressed out of context in about 60% of triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs). A team at The Institute of Cancer Research has found that this aberrant expression in tumor cells perturbs mitotic arrest and generates aneuploidy, leading to a weakening of the spindle assembly checkpoint and in kinetochore-microtubule error correction.

Akeso Inc.’s first-in-class trispecific antibody, AK-150, has received IND clearance from China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for clinical trials in patients with advanced solid tumors. Engineered using Akeso’s AI-driven drug discovery platform and its proprietary Tetrabody technology, AK-150 is a humanized anti-CSF-1R, ILT2 and ILT4 trispecific antibody that achieves multipathway blockade of both innate and adaptive immunity.