The K-health MIRAE Initiative, also known as Korean ARPA-H, announced plans to allocate about ₩162 billion (US$110 million) in nine new projects over the next five years, with a focus on strengthening national health security.

What Cowen analyst Tara Bancroft called an “exciting” year ahead for Day One Biopharmaceuticals Inc. will be shared by Servier SAS, after the French firm agreed to pay $21.50 per share to acquire Day One in a deal that notched an equity value of about $2.5 billion.

B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), characterized by the clonal expansion of immature lymphoblastic cells, is traditionally treated with lengthy chemotherapy followed by allogeneic stem cell transplantation (aSCT) for high-risk patients. However, patients with relapsed or refractory B-ALL still present a dismal prognosis.

Approximately 10%-15% of breast cancer cases are classified within the invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) type, and a great majority of them are estrogen receptor-positive (ER+). Despite the significant clinical differences between ILCs and invasive carcinoma of no special type (or ductal), ICL treatment still follows ductal paradigms, relying on endocrine therapy plus surgery and radiotherapy.

Great Novel Therapeutics Biotech & Medicals Corp.’s epigenetic immunoactivator, GNTbm-38, has received IND clearance from the FDA, enabling initiation of a phase I trial in the U.S. 

Kestrel Therapeutics Inc. has obtained IND approval from the FDA for KST-6051, an oral, small-molecule pan-KRAS inhibitor being developed for the treatment of KRAS-driven cancers.

The OX40-targeting mechanism pursued by drug developers around the world found itself shadowed March 3 when Kyowa Kirin Co. Ltd. gave up work with rocatinlimab, a monoclonal antibody for which hopes had risen in moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, prurigo nodularis and moderate to severe asthma.