Kairos Pharma Ltd. has announced that through its academic partnership with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai has received $600,000 in funding from the Department of Defense lung cancer research program to advance the development of ENV-205, a new drug to treat chemotherapy drug resistance and cachexia.
Using ALK+ lung cancer patient-derived cell lines, researchers have performed phosphoproteomic screening and identified guanylate kinase 1 (GUK1) as a TKI sensitive metabolic molecule in ALK-driven lung cancer. They reported their results online in Cell on Feb. 6, 2025.
With Gilead Sciences Inc. stepping away from its exclusive option rights to casdatifan in treating cancer, Arcus Biosciences Inc. has decided to move on by pricing a $150 million common stock offering. Arcus said Gilead’s rights to the HIF-2a inhibitor, which just produced positive early phase data, had expired.
After withdrawing plans for an IPO last year, Orum Therapeutics Inc. made its debut on the Korea Exchange in 2025 with a ₩50 billion (US$34.7 million) raise as South Korea’s first biopharma IPO of the year.
Biomissile Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. is developing multispecific antibodies that overcome resistance associated with antibody-drug conjugates via its next-generation natural killer (NK) cell engagers. “ADCs are very efficacious, but they do have a drawback with side effects and resistance, because ultimately ADCs are similar to chemotherapy because you bring toxins to the tumor site,” Biomissile co-founder and CEO Chao Tu told BioWorld.
Dealmaking in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region took off this week, with the latest showcasing Genome & Co.’s licensing deal with Ellipses Pharma Ltd. for GENA-104, a phase I-ready immuno-oncology asset, under undisclosed terms Feb. 11.
Radiopharm Theranostics Ltd.’s radiotracer RAD-101 (F18-Pivalate) successfully detected brain metastases in a variety of primary solid tumors in a phase II study.
Dongkook Life Science Co. Ltd. (DKLS) priced a ₩18 billion (US$12.5 million) IPO on the Korea Exchange as South Korea’s first med-tech listing of the year.
Researchers from Zhengzhou University and affiliated organizations published data from a study that aimed to assess the expression levels of histone modifier enzymes in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).
Canwell Biotech Ltd. has described antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) comprising an antibody covalently linked to a Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) and TLR8 agonist through a cleavable or noncleavable linker reported to be useful for the treatment of cancer, allergy, autoimmune diseases, immunodeficiency disorder, sepsis and infections.