Baseimmune Ltd. has announced its strategic expansion into fibrosis, with a new fibrosis-focused pipeline led by a program for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

Qyuns Therapeutics Co. Ltd. has moved closer to its first commercial product after China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) accepted its NDA for IL-17 antibody crusekitug (QX-002N) for treating ankylosing spondylitis (AS), a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the spine and sacroiliac joints.

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is an inflammatory skin disease accompanied by pruritus, for which IL-13 and IL-31 are clinically validated targets. Earendil Labs Inc. has developed a bispecific antibody targeting both IL-13 and IL-31, HX-16108, with an extended half-life.

The signaling axis orchestrated by OX40L-OX40 is a T-cell costimulatory pathway implicated in multiple autoimmune diseases, such as atopic dermatitis (AD). Antibodies targeting this pathway have proven useful at treating AD in the clinical setting. Earendil Labs recently presented data regarding HXN-1021, an anti-OX40L antibody with potent activity and extended half-life, in vivo.

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.

Salt-inducible kinase 2 (SIK2) is a serine/threonine kinase that regulates transcriptional programs in myeloid cells by phosphorylating transcriptional coregulators. In macrophages, SIK2 promotes the expression of proinflammatory cytokines and contributes to the balance between inflammatory and regulatory responses. Researchers from Nimbus Therapeutics LLC presented the preclinical efficacy of NTX-147, a SIK2 selective inhibitor, in ex vivo models of ulcerative colitis (UC).