Most drug developers working in the immunotherapy space focus on existing therapeutic targets when developing cancer drugs, optimizing ways of drugging them via engineering modalities such as CAR T-cell approaches, CRISPR editing or antibody-drug conjugates that deliver toxic payloads. The angle of one company – Cartography Biosciences – is the opposite to this. Its modus operandi is to pinpoint the immunological targets first, leveraging tools that already exist, before building therapies around them.
T cells do not have the last word in some breast cancers. According to a study from the University of Pittsburgh, the key to estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast tumors are macrophages, not T cells, and targeting them could prevent immunotherapy failure in this type of cancer.
The traps that neutrophils develop against microorganisms also hold T cells and prevent the success of immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer. To free the immune system from itself, scientists at the Istituto Oncologico Veneto in Italy made a key that unlocked this sticky dungeon from an antibody against arginase-1 (ARG1), an enzyme also present in the trap.
Rise Therapeutics LLC has received FDA clearance for its IND application to proceed with a phase I trial of R-3750, a synthetic biology-based cellular immunotherapy being developed for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. The phase I trial will enroll patients with mild to moderate ulcerative.
Unexpected behavior of neutrophils unveiled by researchers at Stanford University could lead to a new type of immunotherapy to treat cancer. Although various studies have suggested that these cells are harmful due to their immunosuppressive characteristics, the scientists saw in them an opportunity to redirect them and eliminate tumors.
Immunotherapy, a treatment that increases the survival of cancer patients to the point of remission of the disease, can also have the opposite effect. In some patients, immune checkpoint blockade accelerates cancer. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School have discovered that the answer to this hyperprogressive disease (HPD) lies in the interconnection of the molecular pathways of interferon signaling (IFNγ), fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) and the β-catenin protein.
Cofactor Genomics Inc. opened the non-small-cell lung cancer portion of its study of the Oncoprism test, which predicts response to immunotherapy. The Predicting Immunotherapy Efficacy from Analysis of Pre-treatment Tumor Biopsies (PREDAPT) trial will study the test’s predictive ability in 11 cancers in total.
NK cell-based cancer immunotherapy has emerged as an anticancer treatment approach and is currently being tested in clinical trials. KIR2DL5, a member of the human killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) family, has recently been identified as a binding partner for poliovirus receptor (PVR). However, the biology and therapeutic potential of the KIR2DL5/PVR pathway remain widely unexplored.
Previous research has shown that cytotoxic lymphocytes rely on gasdermin-mediated pyroptosis to kill tumor cells. Pyroptosis appears to be closely involved in anticancer immune response and has therefore emerged as a promising strategy for cancer treatment. In a recently published study, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison aimed to leverage gasdermin-triggered pyroptosis for antitumor immunotherapy.
Sana Biotechnology Inc. has outlined the status of its pipeline following a portfolio prioritization. The company remains on track to file an IND this year for SC-291, the company's HIP-modified, CD19-targeted allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T therapy, with initial clinical data expected next year.
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