Medigene AG has selected its lead candidate for MDG-2021, a T-cell receptor engineered T-cell (TCR-T) therapy targeting KRAS G12D with human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A*11 being developed in combination with the company’s PD1-41BB costimulatory switch protein (CSP) technology.

The FDA has granted orphan drug designation to Be Biopharma Inc.’s BE-101, a novel engineered B-cell medicine being developed for the treatment of hemophilia B.

Bluesphere Bio Inc. has received FDA clearance of its IND application for BSB-1001 for patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML), acute lymphocytic leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes, in conjunction with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloHSCT).

On the heels of a $4.6 million series A round in December 2023, cell therapy company Rxcell Inc. is planning to raise another $15 million in 2024 to take its iPSC-derived photoreceptors to the clinic for retinitis pigmentosa and other degenerative diseases of the retina.

One of the building blocks for newly launched Clasp Therapeutics Corp. is making the right patient choices for treatment. If those who receive the company’s therapy are correctly identified, CEO Robert Ross told BioWorld, it will have a profound effect on outcomes. The missing link in cancer treatment, Ross added, was how to identify a patient, something he said Clasp is able to do.

Asgard Therapeutics AB has raised €30 million (US$32.8 million) in a series A round to advance a novel approach to cancer immunotherapy, in which it is proposed to reprogram cancer cells into functional antigen-presenting dendritic cells in vivo, activating a host immune response against the tumor.

Researchers from University of California Los Angeles and affiliated organizations published data from a study that aimed to identify novel surface proteins that are highly and selectively expressed in tumors and could serve as targets for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies for the treatment of melanoma.

IMU Biosciences Ltd. has raised £11.5 million (US$14.7 million) in a series A round to further develop and commercialize profiling technology that can identify from a blood sample which of more than 2,000 cell types are present in an individual’s immune system.

Researchers have developed a new approach for the development of improved CAR T cells with bifunctional degraders, which linked ubiquitin to an endogenous target protein. The key to the design was the use of multispecific protein degraders and E3 ligases, which increased the proliferation of CAR T cells and their antitumor potency. This combination can be adapted to different uses of cell therapies.