Oncolytic viruses are therapeutic agents used for in situ immunization in cancer immunotherapy. Unfortunately, its efficacy is particularly limited in solid tumors expressing stimulator of interferon genes (STING) and retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I).
Actym Therapeutics Inc. has obtained IND clearance from the FDA to begin a phase I trial of ACTM-838. The first-in-human study will enroll patients in the U.S. and Australia with advanced solid tumors who have failed prior lines of therapy and have no clinically beneficial treatment options.
In an exclusive licensing agreement, Astrazeneca plc will get the global rights to research, develop and commercialize protein stimulator of interferon genes, STING inhibitor compounds, from F-star Therapeutics Inc. Astrazeneca is responsible for currently preclinical STING inhibitor compounds from F-star, which retains rights to all its STING agonists in clinical development for treating cancer.
A China-U.S. study led by scientists at China Pharmaceutical University (CPU) and Harvard University has identified a new small-molecule antagonist of the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) signaling pathway, SN-011, and shown it to be safe, effective and specific in STING-driven inflammatory diseases.
Roivant Sciences Ltd. is buying Silicon Therapeutics LLC for $450 million in Roivant equity plus regulatory and commercial milestone payments. The combination of Silicon’s computational physics platform for in silico design or optimizing small-molecule drugs with Roivant’s newly unveiled protein degradation platform will be powered by Roivant’s machine learning models.
Australian researchers are the first to discover how inflammation is triggered in motor neuron disease (MND) and identified the molecules involved, which could be the first step toward development of treatments to slow the progression of MND and possibly other debilitating neurological diseases.
The importance of the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway in orchestrating the body’s innate response to pathogenic, tumor or self-DNA in the cytoplasm has made it a hot target in immunology research and drug discovery, and several biopharma companies have started programs dedicated to that area, spanning infectious and inflammatory diseases as well as cancer. The second part of this feature examines the products undergoing preclinical development as well as the ones that are now in clinical testing.
