When, late last year, Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. won breakthrough status from the FDA for HER3-targeting lung cancer prospect patritumab deruxtecan, Wall Street began taking stock of other candidates in the space. “The winning strategy to therapeutically target HER3 remains to be seen,” noted a recent paper in Clinical Cancer Research, “but HER3 is a promising drug target, and the era of drugging the ‘undruggables’ has already started.”

Cancer therapy developer Immpact Bio USA Inc. has raised $111 million to further its "logic gate"-based CAR T-cell platform, the source of a CD19/CD20 bispecific in phase I testing for B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients whose disease has returned or who has stopped responding to treatment. New data from that study, showing complete remissions in seven of eight patients treated, accompanied the appointment of a new president and CEO for the company as well as a new board chair.

The enzyme poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase 1 (PARP1) is well known for its role in DNA damage repair, and multiple FDA-approved PARP inhibitors are used to treat BRCA-mutated tumors. Now, researchers at the Wistar Institute have described a role for PARP in regulating the genome of Epstein-Barr virus.