Artiva Biotherapeutics Inc. has received FDA clearance of its IND application for Allonk (AB-101), to be used in combination with rituximab for treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in patients with active lupus nephritis.

Researchers at City of Hope were awarded $32.3 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to support three novel phase I clinical trials evaluating innovative cell and gene therapy treatments for patients with HIV, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and severe aplastic anemia.

Lift Biosciences Ltd. has reported a substantially marked increase in cancer killing with the attachment of HER2 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) to its immunomodulatory alpha neutrophil (IMAN) cell therapy, using the company’s second-generation N-Lift (neutrophil only leukocyte infusion therapy) platform. Positive data support the potential of the In-Lift platform to produce a variety of genetically engineered CAR-IMANs to enhance killing and more targeted immunomodulation for different tumor targets.

Transplanted human glial cells could outcompete human glia in a chimeric mouse model of Huntington’s disease, inducing apoptosis. And younger health cells could outcompete older ones. The findings, which appeared online in Nature Biotechnology on July 17, 2023, help pave the way for testing glial cell transplantation as a therapeutic strategy in neurodegenerative disorders.

Tenpoint Therapeutics Ltd. raised $70 million in a series A funding round to pursue ambitious plans to reverse vision loss using both ex vivo cell engineering and in vivo cell reprogramming approaches.

Maxcyte Inc. and Vittoria Biotherapeutics Inc. have signed a strategic platform license agreement for use of Maxcyte’s Flow Electroporation technology and Expert platform by Vittoria Biotherapeutics. Under the agreement, Vittoria will obtain nonexclusive clinical and commercial rights to use Maxcyte’s Flow Electroporation technology and Expert platform, and will pay Maxcyte platform licensing fees and program-related revenue.

The loss of the dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra and their projections in the putamen cause motor disabilities, which are one of the main hallmarks in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Medigene AG has announced its pipeline expansion into neoantigens with KRAS as the first target in its MDG-10xx program, a T-cell receptor engineered T cell (TCR-T) therapy being developed in combination with the company's PD1-41BB switch receptor technology.

The targeted delivery of optimized stem cells directly into injured tissues has been used to maximize efficacy and minimize systemic exposure. Still, despite hundreds of clinical trials evaluating mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy as a treatment, clinical efficacy remains highly variable. Investigators at Case Western Reserve University have developed an optimized combination of cytokines and growth factors applied to MSCs (HXB-319).