Clasp Therapeutics’ novel T cell engagers could offer advantages over others in this class of cancer immunotherapies. The startup is based on the research of Johns Hopkins University scientist Bert Vogelstein. By FRANK VINLUANCancer immunotherapy comes in several forms, and one area of growing research interest is a type of drug called a T cell engager. These drugs bind to a cancer cell and a T cell simultaneously, bringing both of them together to spark a therapeutic effect. Robert Ross, CEO of Clasp Therapeutics, likens T cell engagers to the chaperone at a middle school dance who grabs a boy and a girl in each hand, getting them to dance together. But in cancer drugs, just as in school dances, sometimes the pairing just isn’t right. The wrong pairing in cancer happens when a drug that’s targeted to a tumor also hits healthy cells, causing toxic effects. Clasp is developing ...
Tubulis’s next-generation ADC cancer drugs are designed to overcome limitations of currently available therapies in this drug class. The new financing will support clinical trial plans, but first, preclinical proof-of-concept data will be presented during the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting. By FRANK VINLUAN The concept of an antibody drug conjugate, or ADC, is straightforward: a cancer-killing drug is chemically linked to an antibody that targets the delivery of the therapy to a tumor. This drug class has made progress with several approved products and many more on their heels in clinical development. But there’s still plenty of room to improve on this type of targeted cancer therapy, contends Dominik Schumacher, CEO of Tubulis. When an ADC releases its drug payload too early, it hits healthy tissue and sparks toxic effects, Schumacher said. Also, current ADC designs are restricted in their ability to match the biology of cancer ...
The phase 1/2 Mobilize trial is evaluating the safety and efficacy of mRNA-4359 Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT) and Imperial College London (ICL) have announced that the first UK patients have received the experimental mRNA therapy in an ongoing phase 1/2 clinical trial to treat melanoma, lung cancer and other solid tumour cancers. The patients received the treatment at the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Imperial Clinical Research facility at Hammersmith Hospital. In the UK, around one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. While a range of therapies, including chemotherapy and immune therapies, have been successful, some cancer cells can become resistant to drugs, making tumours more challenging to treat. Sponsored by Moderna and undertaken through the Moderna-UK strategic partnership, the global Mobilize trial is evaluating the safety and efficacy of an immunotherapy known as mRNA-4359, as well as its ability to ...
FogPharma’s lead program is a peptide that blocks a difficult-to-drug pathway inside of cells. The new financing will go toward an ongoing Phase 1/2 study in advanced solid tumors and support development of pipeline programs for other elusive cancer targets. By FRANK VINLUAN FogPharma has reached early clinical development with a therapeutic candidate that takes a novel approach to treatment of solid tumors. The company now has $145 million to continue the drug’s clinical development and advance more programs in its pipeline. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based FogPharma discovers and develops peptides capable of entering cells to address targets that drive disease. Such targets haven’t been drugged before due to the difficulty of getting a drug to act within a cell. FogPharma says its peptide drugs, which it calls Helicon therapeutics, can get inside a cell to modulate protein-protein interactions as well as protein-DNA interactions. FogPharma’s lead program is FOG-001, a Helicon therapeutic ...
Recently, Hengrui Pharmaceuticals’ subsidiaries, Shanghai Shengdi Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. and Suzhou Shengdia Biopharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. received the Notice of Approval for Drug Clinical Trial approved by the State Drug Administration, which authorizes the company to carry out the clinical trial of adelberizumab in combination with SHR-A1811 for the treatment of breast cancer. According to the data released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization in 2020, breast cancer has become the world’s number one malignant tumor and is the most common malignant tumor in women. Statistics show that in 2020, there were about 2.26 million newly diagnosed cases of female breast cancer and 685,000 deaths worldwide, ranking first in female malignant tumor morbidity and mortality. The incidence and mortality rates of breast cancer worldwide vary according to regional distribution. In China, the 2020 China Cancer data show that the incidence rate of breast ...
On February 12, 2024, the Volume. 42 Issue. 2 of Cancer Cell, a highly regarded oncology journal with an impact factor of 50.3, was published online. ASTRUM-004, Henlius’ pivotal phase 3 clinical study of anti-PD-1 mAb HANSIZHUANG (serplulimab) plus chemotherapy as first-line treatment for previously untreated locally advanced or metastatic squamous non-small-cell lung cancer (sqNSCLC), was highlighted on the front cover of the issue. This marks the first time a clinical study of an innovative Chinese drug has been featured on the journal’s cover in its 22-year history. The study was led by Professor Caicun Zhou from Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital. “Zhou et al. report the results of a phase 3 trial that demonstrates the efficacy and safety of serplulimab plus chemotherapy as first-line treatment for patients with advanced squamous non-small-cell lung cancer (sqNSCLC).” The editors highly commended ASTRUM-004 and the cover design. “The cover features a collage of pathology slices ...
Dragonfly Therapeutics has entered a clinical collaboration with Gilead Sciences to assess the potential of its investigational drug candidate DF1001 with the latter’s Trodelvy for two cancer indications. The study of the combination regimen will focus on metastatic breast cancer (mBC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). DF1001 is designed to act on natural killer (NK) cells and T-cell activation signals, leveraging co-stimulation of NK receptor NKG2D and CD16 for NK cell activation. Trodelvy is a Trophoblast cell-surface antigen 2-directed antibody-drug conjugate. Dragonfly will maintain operational control of the trial, with the first patients receiving the combination treatment in the second quarter of 2024. Study sites are already operational in the US, Belgium, France, Denmark and the Netherlands. The study is set to expand, with additional sites in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Developed using Dragonfly’s TriNKET platform, DF1001 is being evaluated in adult patients for the treatment of ...
Tumours with high mtDNA mutations more likely to respond to Opdivo Scientists from the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre have discovered a cancer treatment that can identify patients who are more likely to respond to cancer drugs. Funded by Cancer Research UK and published in Nature Cancer, the study reveals new ways to identify patients who could benefit most from immunotherapy testing for mitochondrial DNA mutations (mtDNA). Researchers rewired the DNA of the mitochondria – energy factories found in living cells – to determine cancer responses to treatments that harness the body’s natural defences to attack cancer cells. Found in up to 50% of all cancers, mtDNA mutations cause mitochondrial dysfunction, which affects adenosine triphosphate levels – the source of energy for use and storage at the cellular level – as well as other cellular processes, leading to neuronal loss. Researchers found that tumours with ...
This study was led by Professor Jin Li of Dongfang Hospital, Tongji University, with the participation of a total of 17 centers across China. Previously, four other indications of SHR-A1811 have been included in the list of breakthrough therapeutic varieties by the Drug Evaluation Center of the State Drug Administration, and the indications are: recurrent or metastatic breast cancer with low expression of HER2, HER2-positive recurrent or metastatic breast cancer, HER2-mutated advanced non-small-cell lung cancer that has failed previous platinum-containing chemotherapy, and advanced non-small-cell lung cancer that has failed previous treatments of oxaliplatin, fluorouracil, and irinotecan, and has failed previous treatments of oxaliplatin, fluorouracil, and irinotecan. irinotecan treatment failure, and HER2-positive colorectal cancer. In 2020, gastric cancer ranks 5th in global cancer incidence and 4th in mortality. HER2-positive gastric cancer is a unique disease subtype that requires different treatment strategies from HER2-negative gastric cancer. The global HER2-positive rate of gastric ...
When cells die, they disintegrate, releasing part of their DNA material into the bloodstream. This cell-free DNA (cfDNA) contains cancer signals. The cfDNA from healthy cells breaks down into standard-sized fragments, whereas cancerous cfDNA fragments disintegrate at different locations, often in the genome’s repetitive regions. Instead of searching for specific DNA mutations, which is like finding a single misarranged letter in billions of letters, researchers have developed a novel machine-learning method. This method detects variations in fragmentation patterns between cancerous and normal cfDNA in these repetitive regions of cancer. This groundbreaking technique could potentially allow for earlier cancer detection in patients through smaller blood samples, as it requires approximately eight times less blood than what is needed for whole genome sequencing. The algorithm called Alu Profile Learning Using Sequencing (A-Plus) was developed by researchers at City of Hope (Duarte, CA, USA) and Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen, Phoenix, AZ, USA). ...
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