Olivia Vizier

Some of this work has already arrived, such as Helix’s COVID-19 test, which detects the coronavirus in thousands of samples collected at San Diego County test sites. Other efforts are several months away, including CalciMedica’s anti-inflammatory drug meant to help keep COVID-19 patients off ventilators; the biotech believes the treatment could be approved by May […]

Celyad Oncology is a clinical-stage biotechnology company centered on the development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies for the treatment of cancer. This approach involves engineering patient or donor T cells to display a CAR that targets the immune cells to cancer cells via antigen–receptor binding.

Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. announced 24-week liver biopsy results in patients from an open-label phase 2 clinical study of ARO-AAT, a second-generation investigational RNA interference therapeutic intended for treatment of a liver disease associated with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.

Craig Fraser, CEO and President, Windtree Therapeutics talks about acute heart failure, the number one reason for hospitalization in people over 65 and the fact that there has been little innovation in trying to improve cardiac function. Developing a novel dual action drug called istaroxime, Windtree is addressing both parts of the cycles of the

Valneva SE, a vaccine specialist created by a merger in 2013, is the only drugmaker in the U.S. and Europe developing an inactivated shot against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The approach uses a sample of the coronavirus that has been killed to stimulate an immune response without causing the disease. The approach has been used for

Sudarshan Hebbar, CMO of CalciMedica, reveals how the FDA, ethics committees, and safety consortia have responded to helping to advance the application of novel therapeutics towards COVID.

COVID-19 resembles an endothelial disease and treating it with anti-inflammatory agents, similarly to other endothelial diseases, may be appropriate, according to a viewpoint published in the European Heart Journal.

On this week’s Tech Nation, Moira speaks with a company that paused its work on Hepatitis B to focus on treatments for COVID. Dr. Lawrence Blatt, the CEO of Aligos Therapeutics joins Moira to talk about their idea for treating COVID. Then, Tech Nation Health Chief Correspondent, Dr. Daniel Kraft tells us that all COVID

Named after the average length of the GI tract, 9 Meters’ larazotide is the first coeliac drug to enter Phase III trials. If things go to plan, larazotide could be approved by 2023, thereby overcoming the unmet needs that remain in this condition despite adherence to a gluten-free diet.

SOTIO’s genetically-engineered SO-C101 is showing promise as a monotherapy and combined with immunotherapies in pre-clinical tests and also recently in a phase I study. CBO Jens Hennecke, Ph.D. shared an update on the company’s Phase 1 Progress.

California-based INmune decided to leverage its TNF platform and launch a Phase II trial of its selective inhibitor of soluble TNF (sTNF), Quellor, in hospitalised Covid-19 patients. Quellor differs from the existing TNF inhibitors on the market, which are prescribed for inflammatory conditions ranging from rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis, because it only

In this article, Drug Target Review’s Hannah Balfour discusses with Chief Medical Officer of SOTIO, Richard Sachse, why interleukin 15 (IL-15) signalling has become a top target for cancer immunotherapies and how they designed their drug (SO-C101) to overcome some of the limitations of previous IL-15 and IL-2 targeted therapies.

The UK government has placed an order for 60 million doses of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine from Valneva for about $555 million. The deal includes an additional investment that CEO Thomas Lingelbach says will help double the footprint of Valneva’s manufacturing site in Livingston, Scotland, and allow it to produce 100 million to 150 million doses annually.

Cidara Therapeutics is hoping that its novel approach to influenza will prevent future “twindemic” double threats like the one we may face this year. With their proprietary Cloudbreak® antiviral platform, Cidara is developing long-acting therapeutics designed to improve the standard of care for patients with serious fungal or viral infections.

Arrowhead is one of the leading companies researching RNA interference, a Nobel Prize-winning technology that has been aimed at an array of chronic and genetic diseases.

Valneva SE has announced a vaccine partnership with the UK Government for its inactivated COVID-19 vaccine, covering up to 190 million doses.

Vaxart will start a Phase 1 clinical trial for its oral COVID-19 vaccine candidate, having received Investigational New Drug (IND) clearance.

Valneva, a France-based biotech company, is currently developing a drug that has the potential to treat Lyme disease. Called VLA15, the drug is in phase two of trials and the company is already planning for phase three.

Orasis Pharmaceuticals is one of several biotechs developing miotic-based eye drops as a potential alternative to reading glasses — one drop, and no more squinting at text messages. With the help of a $30 million Series C, the Israel-based company has its sights set on Phase III.

An Australian-based biotech company has announced positive, dose-dependent reductions against SARS-CoV-2 infection, the virus that causes COVID-19, following treatment with two anti-infective drug candidates, RECCE® 327 and RECCE® 529 (R327 and R529). Recce Pharmaceuticals, which developed the candidates, says it will be advancing the compounds to in vivo studies in ferrets in a US study.

The allogeneic therapy, CYAD-211 from Celyad Oncology, is unique insofar that it uses short-hairpin RNA (shRNA) editing to knock down the CD37 component of the T-cell receptor (TCR). It is a first-in-class CAR-T candidate, meaning it would represent the first CAR-T therapy that uses this gene-editing approach.

NeoTX Therapeutics and Active Biotech, meanwhile, are working on immunotherapy with naptumomab, which fuses the Fab fragment of an antibody targeting 5T4 with an engineered bacterial superantigen that activates T cell responses.

The work is being done in conjunction with biotech company Heat Biologics. This candidate vaccine will need to go through clinical studies before scientists will know if it works in people.

Filippo Petti is CEO of Celyad Oncology (Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium), a clinical-stage biotech focused on the discovery and development of CAR-T therapies. Here, he tells Pharm Exec how the pandemic affected his role as a US-based CEO to a Belgian company and what permanent changes it has brought to the way the company operates.

NeuBase leader Dietrich A. Stephan, Ph.D. says we’ve reached a digitally-enabled inflection point in disease therapy development.

Likewise, Compugen is positioning its anti-TIGIT therapy, COM902, alongside the company’s inhibitor of poliovirus-receptor-related immunoglobulin (PVRIG), a related co-inhibitory receptor that competes with DNAM-1 and TIGIT for binding to the CD122 ligand.