HONG KONG – Lucence Diagnostics Pte Ltd., a genomic medicine company headquartered in Singapore, has secured $20 million in series A investment. The company is focused on inventing liquid biopsy tests for cancer screening and personalizing care.

There are a pair of approved CAR T drugs, Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) from Gilead Sciences Inc. and Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) from Novartis AG, that have been available since 2017 for a few hematological cancers including some lymphomas and leukemias. But little is known about how these engineered chimeric antigen receptor T cells that both target CD19, an antigen prevalent in the cells of many B-cell malignancies, move through the body and proliferate after they are first removed, altered, expanded in number and, finally, returned to a patient's body.

HONG KONG – South Korean biotech Deep Bio Inc. has won CE marking for its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered medical software DeepDx-Prostate Connect.

HONG KONG – South Korean AI-based biotech Azoth Bio Inc., of Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do, and biopharmaceutical venture Wellmarker Bio Co. Ltd., based in Seoul, have signed a memorandum of understanding for cancer drug R&D and commercialization. Under the agreement, the two entities will use Azoth's AI-powered platform to develop Wellmarker's cancer treatment candidates.

Navidea Biopharmaceuticals Inc. disclosed positive results from the first interim analysis of its ongoing NAV3-31 phase IIb study. Analysis shows the data support Navidea's hypothesis that Tc 99m tilmanocept imaging can provide robust, quantitative imaging in healthy controls and in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has posted a draft rewrite of the coverage memo for next-generation sequencing (NGS), and while the draft rewrite fails to address a number of concerns, the agency eliminated references to advance-stage cancer, opening the door to considerably greater utilization.

A JAMA Open Network study found that RNA testing determined whether 88% of variants of uncertain significance found in DNA testing for hereditary cancer genes were pathogenic or benign.

LONDON – Pfizer Inc. is taking further steps to distinguish its third-generation anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitor, Lorbrena, from the rest of the field, funding a pan-European trial that will use liquid biopsies to track the resistance profile of non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC).

Genomic testing firm Veracyte Inc. is eyeing 2021 for the launch of its noninvasive nasal swab classifier for early lung cancer detection and diagnosis, following preliminary clinical data demonstrating high sensitivity in low-risk patients and high specificity in high-risk patients with known lung nodules. The South San Francisco-based company is developing the nasal swab test in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Inc.'s Lung Cancer Initiative, part of a long-term strategic collaboration that also aims to speed commercialization of Veracyte's Percepta genomic sequencing classifier.