Initial Therapeutics Inc. has launched with a focus on developing medicines that block difficult-to-drug protein targets with a new mode of action – selective termination of protein synthesis (STOPS).

A pill that delivers electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve from inside the stomach was able to trigger the release of appetite-controlling neurohormones, specifically the “hunger hormone” ghrelin. The work, which was described in the April 26, 2023, issue of Science Robotics, could pave the way for treating “metabolic, [gastrointestinal], and neuropsychiatric disorders noninvasively with minimal off-target effects,” the authors wrote in their paper.

Researchers have identified a druggable pocket on the phosphatase Wip1, which regulates the tumor suppressor TP53 as well as DNA damage repair proteins. The work, which was published in Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences on April 18, 2023, by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, could lead to therapeutics targeting Wip1. And the computational deep learning methods used to identify the pocket are broadly useful for identifying what the authors call “cryptic” pockets.

Veneno Technologies Co. Ltd. has entered into a joint research agreement with Sumitomo Pharma Co. Ltd. under which Veneno will conduct a program to obtain functional peptides (disulfide-rich peptides) for ion channels targeted by Sumitomo Pharma.

Bracco Imaging SpA and Sonothera Inc. have entered into an agreement under which Bracco Imaging will provide its cutting-edge gas-filled microbubbles technology platform to Sonothera for use in the development of its novel, ultrasound-guided nonviral gene therapy platform.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and Ginkgo Bioworks Inc. have announced a partnership to leverage Ginkgo's proprietary high-throughput combinatorial chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) discovery and screening platform with the aim of discovering next-generation GD2 CAR T-cell therapies.

Two neutralizing monoclonal antibodies isolated from volunteers vaccinated against the yellow fever virus controlled the viremia and prevented severe disease and death in hamsters and primates.

Gandeeva Therapeutics Inc. has entered into a research collaboration with Moderna Inc. to...

A research team based at MIT and Harvard has engineered a bacterial injection system to precisely deliver proteins to human cells. This work, published online March 29, 2023, in Nature, is important as while more and more molecular therapies are being developed, off-target effects are always a concern and precise targeting of cells and tissues can still be a challenge.