Shionogi & Co. Ltd. started a phase I trial in Japan for S-217622, its orally administered 3CL protease inhibitor for treating COVID-19. Should the drug be approved by Japanese regulators, it would be the first Japanese-developed COVID-19 treatment to be approved in the country.
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Abeona, Acticor, Adverum, Aurion, Denali, F-star, Immunicum, Innovent, Kyowa Kirin, Mediwound, NGM, Synlogic.
PARIS – Royal Philips NV is working with the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) on an ultrafast cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocol that could reduce scanning times to just a few minutes.
LONDON – An attempt to develop an alternative sampling method to replace unpleasant nasopharyngeal swabbing in COVID-19 diagnosis has failed, with researchers at Owlstone Medical Ltd. finding the number of viral particles that can be collected from the breath of hospitalized patients is below the limit of detection. Owlstone is a specialist in collecting and analyzing breath samples to look for volatile organic compounds that are biomarkers of disease, such as lung cancer and asthma.
Alzamend Neuro Inc.’s positive preclinical data for AL-002 sent the company’s stock (NADAQ:ALZN) more than 70% higher before the market opened July 23. The Tampa, Fla.-based biopharma is researching a mutant-peptide sensitized cell for treating Alzheimer’s disease. The positive data came from a GLP toxicology study using a transgenic mouse model.
Adverum Biotechnologies Inc. CEO Laurent Fischer said the firm chose the more prudent route in scrapping development of gene therapy ADVM-022 (AAV.7m8-aflibercept) for diabetic macular edema (DME) as a result of dose-limiting toxicity in the phase II Infinity trial.
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Acadia, Antengene, Biosplice, GBT, Hemoshear, Heron, Ocuphire, Plus, Spark.
Foresight Diagnostics Inc. has developed a circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) detection platform for detecting minimal residual disease (MRD) in B-cell lymphomas, a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and the most common lymphoma in the U.S., accounting for about 85% of all cases. Now, it has published data showing its phased variant enrichment detection sequencing (PhasED-Seq) nearly doubled the identification of patients with aggressive lymphoma who were not cured by standard therapy and need new treatment options.
Differences between Seres Therapeutics Inc.’s next-generation microbiome therapy and SER-287 were highlighted in the wake of the phase IIb failure with the latter in the study called Eco-Reset, which missed its primary endpoint of improving clinical remission rates in ulcerative colitis (UC) compared to placebo.
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Aprea, Biomarin, Dicerna, Eureka, Immunomolecular, Lumos, Scilex, Sorrento, Takeda.