Dr. Soon-Shiong tells PEOPLE he’s working to create a more universal cancer treatment by rethinking how we use radiation to target cancer cells – and that Reid is proof it can work. Instead of blasting the body with high doses of radiation, the doctor says the method he’s testing “tickles” the cancer cells to wake them up, while at the same time a patient is injected with additional “natural killer cells” that reinforce the body’s immune system in order to find and fight off the cancer.

This precise approach “makes it possible to make drugs that only act on the cell type you care about,” reducing the unwanted side effects that most drugs have, says Margus, chief executive officer of Cerevance, a Boston-based drug development company focused on brain diseases. What’s more, it could lead to a major breakthrough in the field of dementia research. About 50 million people worldwide suffer from dementia, and still there is no treatment to stop or slow its progression.

Dr. Jonathan Javitt, the CEO of NeuroRx, said, “We’re talking to people who have critical COVID-19, with respiratory failure. That is people whose lungs have been affected by the COVID virus, such that their lungs don’t send oxygen properly to their bodies. Then the drug will be available at every hospital.”

“It’s a chronic neurodegenerative process. Chronic just means it goes on very slowly over a long period of time,” said Friedlander, of NeuBase Therapeutics. Holder’s father is at the point in his diagnosis where he often forgets a pandemic is going on. Seeing people in masks scares him.

Redhill Biopharma Ltd.’s chief operating officer, Gilead Raday, told BioWorld that the firm will build on positive results in severe COVID-19 patients with oral opaganib, a first-in-class sphingosine kinase-2 inhibitor that the company has branded Yeliva, and could seek emergency use authorization based on data due by year-end.

9 Meters Biopharma’s program for celiac disease is among the most clinically advanced programs in development. With phase III trials underway and Fast Track designation from the FDA, “It’s, conservatively, at least one year ahead of everyone else’s,” John Temperato, president and CEO, told BioSpace.

It’s early days for Cue Biopharma’s CUE-101, the lead candidate in its IL-2-based CUE-100 Series. In pre-clinical studies, CUE-101 has demonstrated selective binding and preferential activation and expansion of antigen-specific T cells, dose-dependent effector cytokine production, and inhibition of tumor growth both as a monotherapy and in combination with a PD-1 inhibitor. Its first in-human clinical studies commenced last fall.