Two independent studies have linked neuronal injury, inside or outside the brain, to cancer progression and offer new biomarkers and strategies for prevention. While cerebral cancer cells damage axons and drive tumor development, in other types of cancer affecting other organs, nerve disruption caused by tumor proximity triggers inflammation and a suppressive environment that may also be associated with immunotherapy resistance.

Spica Therapeutics NV has been awarded a 2-year €1.0 million (US$1.2 million) grant from Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) to accelerate the development of the company’s lead anti-CD163 depleting monoclonal antibody program in oncology, advancing it toward early IND-enabling studies.

HCW Biologics Inc. has outlined its development of second-generation, pembrolizumab-based immunotherapeutics against solid tumors, particularly for pancreatic and ovarian cancer, using its proprietary T-cell Receptor β Chain constant region (TRBC) product discovery and development platform technology.

CAR T-cell therapy works by engineering a patient’s T cells to express synthetic receptors that recognize and kill cancer cells without relying on HLA presentation. This approach has shown remarkable success in relapsed or refractory B-cell cancers and multiple myeloma, resulting in several approved treatments. However, no CAR T therapy is currently approved for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL).

Oncolytic viruses are being actively explored as cancer therapies because they preferentially infect tumor cells and cause their lysis. At the same time, the viruses can accommodate transgenes that can stimulate anti-cancer responses in the local tumor microenvironment.

Despite the success of traditional viral-based CAR T-cell therapies against several blood malignancies, their efficacy remains limited against solid tumors. Non-viral engineering of CAR T cells using electroporation or lipid nanoparticle delivery of CAR-encoding mRNA achieves high but transient CAR expression, highlighting the limitations of current preclinical models for evaluating mRNA-based CAR T cells.

Researchers from China Pharmaceutical University and collaborators have identified various naphthalene and indane derivatives as selective USP7 inhibitors.