Lamassu Bio Inc. has been awarded a $2.05 million grant from the NIH and National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the development of SA-53 as a treatment for p53 wild-type sarcomas. SA-53 is designed to trigger the body’s natural defense mechanism p53 by blocking MDM2, a protein that deactivates p53 and contributes to treatment resistance.
The new director of the U.S. NIH, Monica Bertagnolli, has set out the prospectus for her tenure, saying she intends to apply the agency’s $47 billion per annum budget to reverse the decline in health and life expectancy in the U.S.
Replay Holdings LLC has entered into an exclusive, worldwide license agreement with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for intellectual property related to a library of T-cell receptors (TCRs) directed against multiple cancer neoantigens.
Gigagen Inc., a subsidiary of Grifols SA, has received clearance from the FDA of its IND application to conduct a phase I trial of GIGA-564 for the treatment of solid tumors.
Duo Oncology Inc. has been awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer grant by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to support the development of DUO-307, a combination nanomedicine that delivers cytotoxic polymer conjugated gemcitabine (PGEM) and an immune modulating chemokine receptor type 2 antagonist (CCR2a) to tumor tissue.
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.
A team of scientists led by The Wistar Institute has been awarded a 5-year National Cancer Institute (NCI) Program Project Grant valued at more than $12 million to explore the role of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in epithelial cancers. The project, which brings together scientists from The Wistar Institute and Harvard University, will focus entirely on the EBV-epithelial cancer link and look at metabolic and epigenetic vulnerabilities simultaneously.
Researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute and collaborators had previously demonstrated the therapeutic efficacy of an autologous whole tumor cell vaccine, named rWTC-MBTA, to prevent primary tumor growth and enhance mouse survival in a colon carcinoma model. The vaccine is composed of irradiated entire tumor cells (rWTC) pulsed with mannan-BAM (a pathogen-associated molecular pattern), TLR agonists and anti-CD40 antibody (MBTA).
Eureka Therapeutics Inc. has entered into a license agreement with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to develop and commercialize a novel antibody targeting mesothelin (MSLN) in combination with Eureka's proprietary Artemis T-cell receptor platform.