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The Fight Against Fungi

Cidara Therapeutics is exploring echinocandin derivatives. The company’s clinical candidate rezafungin is a derivative of anidulafungin, a compound originally discovered at Eli Lilly and Company and currently marketed by Pfizer. Chemists placed a choline group at a critical point on the molecule, a feature that stabilizes the echinocandin ring and prevents metabolic breakdown of the molecule, explains Cidara’s president and CEO, Jeff Stein.

Developing Oral Drugs for Neurodegenerative Diseases Based on Bioenergetic Nanotherapeutics with Mark Mortenson Clene Nanomedicine

Mark Mortenson, Chief Science Officer, Clene Nanomedicine is combining physics with biology to develop its bioenergetic nanocatalyst drug candidates that accelerate neurorepair for patients with neurodegenerative disease. Using gold nanocrystals, the company is able to amplify bioenergetic reactions in patients that ultimately drive intracellular biological reactions. The company’s lead candidate, CNM-Au8, is a bioenergetic nanocatalyst powered to support critical intracellular biological reactions that repair and reverse neuronal damage resulting from neurodegenerative disease such as chronic optic neuropathy in patients with multiple sclerosis and the disease progression in patients with ALS.

A three way battle beckons in GM1 gangliosidosis

Sio Gene Therapies’ AXO-AAV-GM1 and Passage Bio’s PBGM01 – are due to yield data in mid-2021, and Lysogene is not too far behind with LYS-GM101. Within the next year there will be a chance to see how the projects stack up against each other in the clinic.

Sio, formerly known as Axovant, is in the lead for now. The group has already reported promising six-month data from the low-dose cohort of its phase I/II trial; notably, clinically meaningful increases have been seen in the enzyme beta-galactosidase, which is deficient in GM1 gangliosidosis.

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A diagnostics company completes its pharma makeover, rebranding as Fore with Immunomedics vet at the helm

As part of the change in direction, Fore has appointed Usama Malik as CEO, a former key player at Immunomedics during their $21 billion acquisition by Gilead.Though they have made the full turn toward therapeutics, Fore’s business model does not focus on drug discovery, Malik told Endpoints News. Rather, the company is planning to utilize its genomics-based platform to in-license programs and screen them to see where they could be best put to use.

Fierce-Biotech

Novellus becomes Fore Biotherapeutics as it completes pivot from diagnostics to precision oncology

NovellusDx started out as a diagnostics company but has been making moves toward becoming a cancer therapeutics biotech in recent months, picking up a BRAF drug from Daiichi Sankyo and raising $57 million to shepherd it through the clinic. Now, it’s wrapping its transformation up with a new name and a new CEO: Fore Biotherapeutics and Usama Malik, a former Immunomedics executive who orchestrated the company’s $21 billion buyout by Gilead.

As mutant COVID variants multiply, the hunt is on for a ‘universal’ kill-all vaccine

French company Valneva, meanwhile, is working on an inactivated vaccine using the whole virus that might have advantages over those already approved, Thomas Lingelbach, the company’s chief executive officer, says. Because it uses the complete virus, the Valneva vaccine enables the immune system to potentially form a response to all possible epitopes—a term for the portions of the virus’s proteins that the immune system can recognize. Valneva also combines the inactivated virus with an adjuvant, a chemical substance that boosts the body’s immune response. What’s more, Valneva has experience producing multivalent vaccines—those that incorporate multiple virus strains in a single shot—and it could potentially produce one for SARS-CoV-2 too.

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Pfizer chips in on $26M raise for rheumatoid arthritis collaborator; Hansoh licenses an anti-fungal for a mysterious infection

Chinese pharma powerhouse Hansoh has a new partner, teaming with the New Jersey biotech Scynexis to develop a drug that has recently gained attention for its potential to treat drug resistant and difficult-to-treat infections, including a particular form of fungus.

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Advancing neutralising antibody therapies for COVID-19

In this article, Ian Chan, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of biotech company Abpro, discusses the development of neutralising antibodies for SARS-CoV-2. Abpro’s neutralising antibody candidate ABP 300 is currently in Phase II/III trials.