The notion of taking aim at the galectin pathway across varied therapeutic areas has gained major traction in recent years, with a handful of companies drawing Wall Street’s interest as efforts plow forth in conditions as varied as cancer, liver fibrosis and Alzheimer’s disease.

Dismissed as undruggable in the early 2000s, Src homology 2 domains are now viable and at the heart of Recludix Pharma Inc.’s new deal with Sanofi SA’s U.S. unit. The two will collaborate on developing and commercializing treatments for immunological and inflammatory diseases. In the near term, Recludix will get $125 million, but long term it could add up to $1.2 billion in milestones. Recludix could also bring in up to double-digit royalties on possible future product sales.

In brain research, be it basic or clinical, neurons have long hogged the limelight. But at the 2023 European Meeting on Glial Cells in Health and Disease, neurons take a back seat to glia – cell types that have often been described as support cells and treated as an afterthought, but that play critical roles in all aspects of brain function, including information processing.

With much-awaited readouts from their broad oncology-focused collaboration due later this year, Arcus Biosciences Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc. have decided to expand efforts into the inflammatory disease space via an early stage research agreement that could be worth as much as $1 billion. Terms include a $35 million up-front payment to Arcus, which is making its first move beyond oncology.

By analyzing a cohort of adolescents that developed myocarditis or pericarditis after vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, researchers from Yale University School of Medicine were able to pinpoint the underlying mechanism as an overly active innate immune response to the vaccine that led to broad activation of T cells and natural killer (NK) cells. Myocarditis “has been seen in other vaccine contexts, though is most common after viral infection,” Carrie Lucas told reporters at a press conference announcing the findings.

Albatroz Therapeutics Pte Ltd. has secured $3 million in seed funding to develop therapeutic antibodies against a new target that degrades the extracellular matrix, a key contributor to cancer and arthritis.

Antitumor immunotherapy has notched big wins, but in a small proportion of patients. And one possible explanation for why is that approved immunotherapies are not yet planting their flag on most of the battlefields where tumors and the immune system engage in combat. At the opening AACR 2023 plenary session, Ralph DeNardo celebrated the successes of the current, mostly T-cell-based approaches,  but also encouraged his colleagues to think more broadly about the antitumor immunity.

With the backing of €2 million (US$2.17 million) in seed funding from venture capital company Adbio partners, French biotech Calida Therapeutics hopes that drawing on some U.S. academic research into thrombo-inflammatory disorders will enable it to develop a series of monoclonal antibodies.

Partially blocking a receptor that helps regulate the activity of the inflammatory cytokine molecule interleukin-6 (IL-6) seems to promote tissue regeneration and block degeneration in a model of osteoarthritis. As reported in the March 22, 2023, issue of Science Translational Medicine, the receptor, called glycoprotein 130 (gp130), regulates both positive and negative inflammatory responses that can help regenerate tissue, but also cause degeneration.