Lynk Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. raised ¥200 million (US$28 million) in a series C1 financing round to accelerate the clinical development of its second-generation and third-generation JAK inhibitors for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Interactions between the gut microbiome and immune system influence cancer immune surveillance, though the mechanism through which these gut-primed immune cells regulate peripheral antitumor immune response is not well understood. Now, two recent studies in Science and Science Immunology using mouse models and human tissue samples have highlighted a group of intestinal T cells with the gut-homing α4β7 integrin receptors that play a critical role in mediating response to immune checkpoint blockade cancer immunotherapy.
Lynk Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. raised ¥200 million (US$28 million) in a series C1 financing round to accelerate the clinical development of its second-generation and third-generation JAK inhibitors for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Tuberculosis (TB) is the 13th leading cause of death in the world, and it is rising together with the increased prevalence of drug-resistant TB in many countries. The Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine is the only available TB vaccine, and it has been given to more people than any other vaccine. While the BCG vaccine has saved tens of millions of lives, it confers suboptimal protection against pulmonary TB as it is limited to providing protection only until early childhood. Significantly, the BCG vaccine is administered intradermally to confer exceptional mucosal immunity as compared to most other vaccines, which are more commonly administered intramuscularly. Novel strategies to improve the duration of TB mucosal immunity are urgently needed.
Autotaxin (ATX) is an enzyme responsible for the production of lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), which plays a role in the pathogenesis of systemic sclerosis (SSc). Researchers from Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp. and colleagues have reported on the preclinical evaluation of MT-5562, a novel oral ATX inhibitor, as a therapeutic option for SSc.
At the recent American Transplant Congress, researchers from McGill University presented the discovery and preclinical evaluation of a novel retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor γt (RORγt) inhibitor, TF-S14, being developed as a potential therapy to delay skin allograft rejection.
Researchers from the Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron and colleagues have reported on the development of Hybri, a hybrid recombinant bispecific fusion protein with immunosuppressive activity that consists of the extracellular domain (ECD) of human PD-L2 fused via a linker to the ECD of human CTLA-4, further fused to the Fc domain of human IgG.
Glucocorticoids are very effective immunosuppressive and anti-inflammatory drugs that cause dose-limiting toxicities in brain, liver and bone preventing their use mainly in chronic disorders. Researchers from Immunext Inc. recently reported results from the therapeutic evaluation of the nontoxic glucocorticoid INX-200 with anti-inflammatory efficacy in a once-per-month injection.