Earlier this month, several people took a pill that might have the ability to prevent colorectal cancer. These individuals are participants of a new pilot study launched by Check-Cap, a medical diagnostics company intent on developing the world’s first ingestible imaging capsule for colorectal cancer screening.

In this episode, Dr. Gabrail and Carrie discuss colon cancer with special guest Anders Rabbe the CEO of Isofol.

Having long been demoted to tool compound status, shRNA is gaining renewed attention as a therapeutic modality by offering a simpler path to creating next-generation cell therapies than gene editing. Celyad has jumped in, using Horizon Discovery’s shRNA platform to launch a new arm of its CAR T cell pipeline.

Transitions challenge every company, but maybe biopharmas most of all. Drug development consists of a series of big steps, each one bringing a dramatic increase in the scale of a company’s expertise, operations, and risk-taking. Vyome is reaching the cusp of an upcoming Phase 2b trial, and it faces its greatest transition so far as a small company. With roots in India but new headquarters in Princeton, NJ, Vyome must now play for much higher stakes in focusing its dermatology portfolio on the U.S. market.

The French company OSE Immunotherapeutics has signed a partnership to use artificial intelligence to develop treatments for tumors that don’t respond to checkpoint inhibitor drugs.

SM04690 is a small-molecule inhibitor of the Wnt pathway currently in clinical trials to evaluate its use managing knee osteoarthritis (OA). The treatment is an intra-articular injection being developed as a disease-modifying osteoarthritis drug (DMOAD). Preclinical data suggest this agent has a dual action mechanism, with three joint health effects: cartilage generation, slowing of cartilage breakdown and inflammation reduction. Presently, no DMOADs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.