Underprivileged children who receive CAR T-cell therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have similar outcomes as those from more advantaged households, according to a new study published in Blood. This is particularly surprising since, overall, children with ALL living in poverty are significantly more likely to relapse and die from…

In 2016, in an effort to better focus business priorities, Fulgent Therapeutics separated into pure-play diagnostics and therapeutics companies Fulgent Genetics and Fulgent Pharma. Yesterday, after six years of honing their business models, publicly traded Fulgent Genetics announced it was acquiring Fulgent Pharma for $100 million to create a vertically…

Candel Therapeutics, a clinical stage developer of viral immunotherapies, announced Wednesday that it will collaborate with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s (UPenn) Center for Cellular Immunotherapies to study the efficacy of using viral immunotherapies to help boost the effects of UPenn’s CAR-T cell therapies in solid tumor models. The…

HOOKIPA Pharma has announced a strategic collaboration and license agreement with Roche to develop its HB-700 immunotherapy for KRAS-mutated cancers and a second undisclosed drug. This is HOOKIPA’s first oncology licensing collaboration. The company is developing a new class of immunotherapies based on its proprietary replicating arenavirus platform. HOOKIPA will…

Researchers at the University of Chicago observed the role of beta cells in triggering autoimmunity, and found that knocking out a proinflammatory gene in the beta cells of mice genetically predisposed to develop T1D preserved beta cell mass and protected the animals from developing diabetes. The research findings also raise…

Researchers at Imagine Pharma, a regenerative medicine company based in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, have engineered pancreatic cells from someone with long term type 1 diabetes and enabled them to produce insulin. While the work is still in its early stages, if validated it could allow a patient’s own cells to be…

Elevation Oncology’s drug candidate seribantumab, currently being evaluated is a Phase II study, has received FDA Fast Track designation for tumor-agnostic  treatment of advanced cancers harboring an NRG1 gene fusion. Seribantumab is a fully human IgG2 monoclonal antibody that binds to human epidermal growth factor receptor 3 (HER3). HER3 is…

A therapy for type 1 diabetes (T1D) that involves transplanting insulin-producing pancreatic islets from a donor into a recipient, but without the need for lifelong immunosuppression, has been developed by researchers at the University of Missouri (MU), Georgia Institute of Technology, and Harvard University. The technology uses a novel biomaterial…

At Penn Medicine, a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been developed that can kill tumor cells in mouse models of neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) and gastrointestinal cancers (GICs) with no obvious toxicity or off target effects. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapies have shown that they can take on blood…

A new spatial functional genomics technology called Perturb-map developed at Mount Sinai, New York, allows users to find genes that regulate cell-extrinsic functions at an unprecedented scale and at single-cell resolution. The technology employs a genetic barcode to mark cancer cells, normal neighboring cells and components of the tumor microenvironment…

Statins may inhibit metastases, according to research using high-throughput drug screens. Fluvastatin was identified as one promising inhibitor, atorvastatin and simvastatin as well as others also showed positive results. The scientists presented their findings in the journal Clinical and Translational Medicine. More than ten years ago, Professor Ulrike Stein and her…

PerkinElmer’s SIRION Biotech business announced today that it will work with biomedical research center of excellence, the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), to jointly develop new adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors for type 1 and type 2 diabetes gene therapy in the pancreas. The collaboration will combine SIRION’s viral vector-based gene…

Researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have discovered how to prevent T-cell exhaustion, which they hope will make CAR T-cell cancer therapies more effective. The newly reported findings demonstrate the key role of the transcription factor BATF in the cellular pathway that triggers T cell exhaustion, and show…

Proteome-focused precision medicine drug developer Frontier Medicines announced today it closed an $88.5 million Series B financing round. The financing was co-led by Woodline Partners LP and RA Capital Management, with equal participation by Deerfield Management Company. Proceeds will be used in the development of the company’s foundational technologies of…

San Diego and Shanghai, China-based Singlera Genomics today a $150 million Series B financing round that will help the company expand its early cancer screening research and development efforts. The round was led by the CICC Kai Tak Innovative Biomedicine Fund, and co-led by Detong Capital and Furong Investment. Addditional…