Olivia Vizier

Cell and gene therapy is not immune to the personalized medicine trend, and BlueSphere Bio hopes its leading T-cell receptor engineering (TCR) platform, along with its TCX-101 clinical candidate, can ultimately bolster the armamentarium for patients with hematologic malignancies and solid tumors.

BlueSphere Bio, for example, is trying to improve the efficacy of allogeneic stem cell transplant (alloSCT) treatments for patients with hematologic malignancies and solid tumors using its T-cell receptor (TCR) discovery platform. That platform, TCXpress™, identifies TCRs that may be especially efficacious against some of the most challenging types of cancer.

SOTIO, a biotech company based in Prague and Cambridge, MA, focuses on improving CAR-T therapies and stable antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). In its poster presentation, SOTIO announced preclinical data on its immunocytokine SOT201 and the BOXR CAR-T cell therapy BOXR1030. The company’s focus, however, was on its oral presentation featuring SOT101. 

Today, he’s CEO of Ring Therapeutics, a promising emerging biotech backed by Flagship Pioneering

Biosion Inc. has out-licensed ex-China rights for its anti-Siglec-15 monoclonal antibody BSI-060T and additional preclinical assets with the same target to Pyxis Oncology Inc. for $10 million up front and potential milestone payments of up to $222.5 million, plus single to low double-digit royalties on commercial sales.

Private drug discovery company Cerevance reported positive clinical trial results Thursday for CVN424, an experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease. The drug was discovered using Cerevance’s NETSseq platform, which holds potential for Parkinson’s treatments as well as many other diseases caused by transcriptional genetic errors.

When Berra Yazar-Klosinski was wrapping up her PhD in molecular cell and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz, there was an unassuming little office right down the road, hidden inside a bungalow-style house with a postage-square lawn.

Venture-capital investment in the biotechnology sector has proved to be resilient so far this year, despite stock-market turbulence and the slower pace of initial public offerings.

Alto Neuroscience wants to use EEG brain biomarkers to better match the right treatment to a person’s needs.

Entasis, which focuses on developing new antibacterial drugs to treat pathogens, utilizes a precision medicine approach to design specific drugs to target specific bacteria.

BlueSphere Bio’s CEO Dr. David Apelian explains the difficulties associated with treating solid tumor cancers as well as what the CGT sector needs to get right in the short term and why.

Ring Therapeutics was launched to take advantage of the viral residents of our bodies – the vast majority of which are anelloviruses. 

The FDA has lifted theclinical hold on Selecta Biosciences’ gene therapy to treat methylmalonic acidemia, a rare disease in children that affects metabolism. The company is now back in the saddle as it preps for a phase 1 trial. 

France-based biologics company Valneva will be advancing toward U.S. Food and Drug Administration accelerated approval of its specialty vaccine, VLA1553. The single-shot chikungunya vaccine was shown to be safe and effective against mosquito-transmitted chikungunya disease in a published analysis of Phase III results.

 To combat the problem of antifungal resistance, Scynexis developed an entirely new class of fungicide: triterpenoid antifungal, which doctors can prescribe when first-line azole treatments don’t work.

Anixa recently launched a Phase I trial of its breast cancer vaccine in patients who have completed treatment for early-stage, triple-negative breast cancer within the past three years and are currently tumor-free but at high risk for recurrence. 

Her company AltruBio focuses on novel therapeutics for immunological diseases, concentrating on unmet medical needs. The company’s lead candidate, therapeutic antibody neihulizumab, has demonstrated clinical proof of efficacy in treating multiple autoimmune and immune-mediated diseases.  

TFF Pharmaceuticals is on the hunt for new partners, and a recently-announced agreement with Catalent could help them land just that.

Executive president of MindMed, Miri Halperin Wernli, PhD, added: “LSD and psilocybin have recently become promising candidates for the treatment of various psychiatric and neurologic disorders, and thus a deeper understanding of their differential subjective effects in humans is needed. 

Cerevance has developed its proprietary, Nuclear Enriched Transcript Sort sequencing (NETSseq) platform to analyze postmortem human brain tissues to produce rich cell type–specific data sets. 

Portage Biotech: Clinical-stage oncology company dedicated to sourcing and acquiring the most promising early-stage assets available to build a pipeline of first-in-class/best-in-class therapeutic candidates. Currently, has well-established partnerships with both Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck.

Teclison, a Princeton, NJ-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing innovative cancer therapeutics to induce tumor necrosis and enhance anti-tumor immunity, closed a $5.9m funding round.

The FDA has granted investigational device exemption to medical diagnostics company Check-Cap for a two-part pivotal study to evaluate C-Scan, a new screening test that detects precancerous polyps.

There are currently no approved treatments for the prevention of recurrent VVC, but Scynexis said it will submit the new phase 3 data to the FDA in the first half of 2022 and expects that ibrexafungerp tablets will be approved for this indication by the end of the year.

Cancer intervention and prevention company Check Cap is developing new, low-invasive ingestible capsule technology that aims to address issues associated with preventive screenings for colonoscopies.

As Glenn Mattes, CEO of TFF Pharmaceuticals, told BioSpace, “The persistent rise of COVID-19 cases, including among the vaccinated, has understandably impacted the morale of both the biopharma industry and the broader community.”

MeiraGTx Holdings PLC said it received a $30 million payment from Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Cos. of Johnson & Johnson, for a clinical milestone in a Phase 3 trial of botaretigene sparoparvovec.

The US Food and Drug Administration has cleared an Investigational New Drug application allowing MindMed to move forward with a phase 2b dose-optimization trial of MM-120 for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).