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.
Arc Therapies Inc., a startup from the National Cancer Center Japan, has initiated research of YB328, a newly identified gut microbe, toward clinical application. The company has designated the YB328 strain as ARC-0812 (RUX: Lux) and will proceed with preclinical and clinical trials to explore its role as an immune adjuvant in cancer immunotherapy.
Researchers from China Pharmaceutical University and collaborators have identified various naphthalene and indane derivatives as selective USP7 inhibitors.
CSPC Megalith Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has described antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) comprising anti-tumor-associated calcium signal transducer 2 (TACSTD2; TROP2) antibodies covalently linked to cytotoxic drugs reported to be useful for the treatment of pancreatic and breast cancer.
Cptx GmbH’s QUIET-CAR collaborative project with Nanocell Therapeutics Inc. has been awarded a Eurostars Grant from the EU through the Horizon Europe program and Eureka Network. The QUIET-CAR project aims to develop targeted lipid nanoparticles carrying novel immune-silent single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) for in vivo CAR T therapy.
Researchers from the University of Tennessee and collaborating institutions have investigated in preclinical models the use of an oncolytic herpes simplex virus (oHSV) armed with the immune-stimulating cytokine interleukin-12 (IL-12) as a potential treatment for glioblastoma. They published their results in Molecular Therapy: Oncology.
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