Shortly after Amgen Inc. walked away from its partnership with Kyowa Kirin Co. Ltd., the Tokyo-based company said it is discontinuing all ongoing clinical trials for rocatinlimab due to safety concerns.

Gliadin is the major allergen of wheat-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis (WDEIA). YH-35324 (lesigercept, GI-301) is a long-acting IgEtrap-Fc fusion protein that targets FcεR1α that could serve as a therapeutic approach in WDEIA. It is under development by Yuhan Corp. in early clinical trials as an allergy treatment.

IgE is known to drive allergic disease, and omalizumab is the only approved anti-IgE antibody to date that has shown suboptimal IgE affinity and limited use in scenarios with high IgE levels.

Belgian pharma giant UCB SA is putting skin in the bispecific T-cell engager (TCE) game, announcing a potential $1.1 billion deal to license Antengene Corp.’s ATG-201. ATG-201 is a CD19/CD3 bispecific TCE antibody aimed at autoimmune disorders, though specific indications were not disclosed.

GSK plc will pay Frontier Biotechnologies Inc. $40 million up front and up to $963 million in milestone payments to license two of Frontier’s small interfering RNA-based assets in the field of immunology.

Quell Therapeutics Ltd. has delivered the first clinical data indicating its chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T regulatory cell therapy, QEL-001, can enable liver transplant patients to be weaned off long-term immunosuppression.

Ono Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has entered into an agreement to expand its drug discovery collaboration agreement with Congruence Therapeutics Inc. for the discovery of novel small-molecule modulators against multiple protein targets in the areas of neurology and immunology.

Autoantibodies and B cells are drivers of progressive autoimmune diseases, but targeting B cells or plasma cells alone is not sufficient to address them. Earendil Labs has presented data on HXN-1031, a novel T-cell engager targeting both CD19 and B-cell maturation protein (BCMA).