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.