The grantmaking process at the U.S. National Institutes of Health has been under scrutiny for several years for several reasons, and a new report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) indicates that the NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) has generally administered its grants properly. However, the report also indicates that some grantees were tardy in filing their final reports on grant performance, a problem that NCI has vowed to correct with tighter supervision of those grants.
PARIS – Resilience SAS raised $46 million in a series A round to ramp up European distribution of its mobile application intended for remote monitoring of breast cancer patients, in partnership with the Gustave Roussy Center in Villejuif, France. This funding round was led by two Parisian venture capital funds specializing in digital health – Cathay Innovation SAS and Singular Capital Partners SAS – along with Dutch-based Exor Seeds NV, German-based Picus Capital GmbH and Seaya Capital Gestion, SGEIC, SA, from Spain.
Scientists from Healthbiocare GmbH, System Biologie AG and the University of Austria have published data indicating pan-cancer detection could be achieved by combining genetic and epigenetic biomarkers in plasma. The scientists developed a classification model that distinguished between healthy subjects and patients with solid tumors with 95.4% accuracy, 97.9% sensitivity, and 80% specificity.
University of Edinburgh spinoff Biocaptiva Ltd. is taking its cell free DNA (cfDNA) capture device to clinical trials in 2022 following promising preclinical results. The company’s platform technology is designed to increase the quantity of cfDNA available for liquid biopsy testing. Current liquid biopsy practices obtain cfDNA via a venous blood draw but the concentration of tumor-derived ctDNA can be too low for comprehensive testing. Biocaptiva’ device emerged from research at the University of Edinburgh investigating liquid biopsy technologies.
LONDON – “I really believe we can start using the word cure,” said the pioneer of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy Carl June, as he revealed two leukemia patients he treated in a phase I trial have now been in remission for 10 years. Both patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia achieved complete remission shortly after treatment in 2010. The genetic modification has remained detectable in their CAR T cells for more than 10 years of follow-up, June said, describing details of the case studies published in Nature Feb. 2.
Cancer diagnostics company Biofidelity Ltd. reported a $23 million series A+ investment round, led by Octopus Ventures with participation from SBI Investment Co. Ltd. and existing investors. Funds will be used for the commercial launch of the company’s first commercial assay Asypre-Lung. The oncology panel is designed to detect DNA mutations from tissue or liquid biopsy quicker than current approaches like gene sequencing.
Since COVID-19 hit the U.S. in 2020, the pandemic has taken more than 800,000 American lives. In that same time, cancer has claimed 1.2 million lives, President Joe Biden said Feb. 2 as he “reignited” the cancer moonshot he first launched in 2016 when he was serving as vice president.
Investors have backed a new precision medicine company targeting clonal hematopoiesis with $40 million. Tensixteen Bio Inc. is on a mission to understand how somatic mutations influence age-related diseases, including cancer. The San Francisco-based startup will use the funds to develop a genomics and clinical platform that can identify patients at high risk of developing disease.
In a lively discussion at the 40th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, panelists from leading diagnostics companies debated the best way to screen for cancer – and whether diagnostic testing does more harm than good in some circumstances. Kevin Conroy, CEO of Exact Sciences Corp., noted that he expected liquid biopsies to have an “enormous impact on making earlier cancer detection a routine part of medical care” with his company currently developing a blood-based test for colon cancer as well as a multicancer test and one for minimal residual disease.
Illumina Inc. and Agendia NV are joining forces for a multiyear partnership to develop diagnostic tests for breast cancer. The collaboration will unite lllumina’s Miseq Dx sequencing platform, with Agendia's flagship genomic test, Mammaprint, which identifies a patient’s breast cancer recurrence risk. Illumina has been steadily signing partnerships over the past few years and currently has more than 30 IVD partners and 40 sequencing-based solutions for cancer under development.
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