The industry is looking, with renewed hope, to the “promise” of messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics for a wide range of diseases beyond COVID-19, and not only in vaccine form but also for gene and cell therapies.

Two weeks after reporting positive top-line results in first-line head and neck cancer with its lead candidate, eftilagimod alfa, in combination with Merck & Co. Inc.’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab), Immutep Ltd. presented updated data indicating the treatment could offer a non-chemotherapy option for patients with negative PD-L1 expression. Data from cohort B of the Tacti-003 (Keynote-PNC-34) phase IIb trial, which included 31 evaluable patients with PD-L1 expression of less than 1, as measured by Combined Proportion Score, showed a 35.5% objective response rate per RECIST 1.1 assessment.

India’s first indigenous CAR T therapy is selling at around $50,000 per shot, nearly one-tenth of the price of top-selling CAR Ts in the U.S., and Immunoact founder and CEO Rahul Purwar told BioWorld he anticipates bringing the price down to as low as $20,000 per shot.

Orum Therapeutics Inc. struck a potential $945 million (₩1.3 trillion) deal with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. to discover novel degrader antibody conjugates (DAC) as targeted conditioning agents for use with gene editing, including Vertex’s gene therapy, Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel).

The lively antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) space chalked another collaboration as Taipei, Taiwan-based Foreseen Biotechnology Co. Ltd. scored a global licensing agreement worth as much as $1.03 billion with Ipsen SA, of Paris, for antibody-drug conjugate FS-001, which is said to bear first-in-class potential. The drug takes aim at a novel tumor-associated antigen that is overexpressed in many solid tumors and plays a critical role in tumor proliferation and metastasis, the companies said.

AI-driven clinical trial design company Opyl Ltd. formed a partnership with L39 Capital Pty Ltd. to establish a $100 million biotech fund that will showcase the predictive power of Opyl’s Trialkey software in selecting successful biotech and pharmaceutical stocks. Melbourne, Australia-based Opyl leverages AI to elevate clinical trial design and forecast outcomes, empowering clinical researchers, biopharma companies and investors to enhance trial design, drug development and market delivery.

Kazia Therapeutics Ltd.'s stock shot up 248% on July 10 after the Sydney-based company reported that paxalisib showed a 3.8-month improvement in overall survival, a 33% improvement, for newly diagnosed unmethylated patients with glioblastoma (GBM) compared to the concurrent standard-of-care arm in the pivotal GBM-Agile phase II/III study.

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis was renamed, for the first time in 34 years, to metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis (MASH), but a name change is far from being the biggest development in the field, according to experts at Bioplus Interphex (BIX) Korea 2024.

Silicon Valley-based Biomap is setting up a new global biocomputing innovation hub, dubbed Biomap Innohub, in Hong Kong as the local government ramps up investment to build supercomputing prowess, Vicky Qu, senior vice president of Biomap, told BioWorld. The goal is to accelerate novel drug product development and commercialization with biocomputing.