Caris Discovery, the therapeutic research arm of Caris Life Sciences Inc., has established a multiyear strategic partnership with Merck KGaA to accelerate the discovery and development of first-in-class antibody-drug conjugates for cancer patients.

It has been previously demonstrated that insulin-reactive B cells act as antigen-presenting cells to promote type 1 diabetes by stimulating pathogenic T cells and leading to destruction of insulin-producing beta cells of pancreatic islets.

Odyssey Therapeutics Inc. has entered into a strategic research collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, a Johnson & Johnson company, to jointly discover and optimize small-molecule medicines against select therapeutic targets.

Inmed Pharmaceuticals Inc. has reported new preclinical data demonstrating INM-901’s pharmacological effects for the potential treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Several preclinical studies were conducted in well-characterized Alzheimer’s disease models.

Researchers from Catholic University of Korea published data from a study that investigated the effect of miRNA-21a-5p on fibrosis development in systemic sclerosis (SSc). With the aim of assessing the pathological impact of miRNA-21a-5p on skin and lung fibrosis in vivo, a bleomycin-induced SSc murine model was developed, and the mice were hydrodynamically injected with plasmids containing pre-miRNA-21a-5p or anti-miRNA-21a-5p.

At a recent meeting on “Research priorities for preventing and treating Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias” (ADRD), convened by the National Academies, one consensus priority on ADRD research was that there needs to be more of it at every stage. Several speakers presented stark numbers on the relative volume of research in cancer and neurodegeneration. Research output, measured in peer-reviewed papers, for dementia is estimated to be around 10,000 papers annually, compared to 150,000 for cancer, while AD clinical trials are also few and far between compared to cancer trials. This final installment of BioWorld’s series on Alzheimer’s explores some of the reasons for this discrepancy along with the latest advances and ongoing efforts to accelerate research and drug development in the field.