Sotio Biotech AS, a company owned by PPF Group, has entered into a license and option agreement with Synaffix BV, a Lonza company, to develop next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of solid tumors.

At the AACR-NCI-EORTC meeting in Boston, Aurigene Oncology Ltd. reported their research on paralogue selective degraders of SMARCA2 (AU-SM2-1) and SMARCA4 (AU-SM4-1).

Cancer treatments for targeting tumor amplifications lag behind those targeting point mutations – and part of the reason may be that amplifications often reside on extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA). Since ecDNA was first described back in 1965 as minute chromatin bodies in brain cancer cells, the use of large-scale DNA sequencing techniques has revealed the presence of ecDNA across a wide range of cancer types. “The circular structure of ecDNA is associated with increased proto-oncogenic capacity in comparison to linear amplifications. Another key feature is that ecDNA does not contain centromeres,” Roel Verhaak, from Yale School of Medicine, told the audience in a session at the 2023 AACR-NCI-EORTC Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Boston.

Medilink Therapeutics (Suzhou) Co. Ltd. has entered into a strategic research collaboration and worldwide license agreement with Biontech SE for the development of a next-generation antibody-drug conjugate candidate (ADC) against HER3.

Researchers from Panolos Bioscience Inc. and affiliated organizations have published preclinical data for PB-101, a novel glycosylated decoy protein targeting both vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and placental growth factor (PlGF).

Researchers working at with Seoul National University together with GPCR Therapeutics Inc. have focused on targeting pairs of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) starting with the CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4), which is well known to serve hematopoietic and early developmental functions, while also being required for cancer metastasis.