Advertisements for Rezdiffra (resmetirom, Madrigal Pharmaceuticals Inc.), which was approved by the U.S. FDA in March 2024, adorned the lobby of The Liver Meeting 2024 being held at the San Diego Convention Center as well as the trolley stop across the street and other areas that doctors attending the meeting might be swayed. But inside the ballrooms of the convention center, companies were making presentations of data from clinical trials testing their drugs in patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) in hopes of potentially competing with Rezdiffra in a few years.
Hangzhou Synrx Therapeutics Biomedical Technology Co. Ltd. recently presented the development and characterization of a novel PARG inhibitor, SYN-608, for the potential treatment of tumors with/without homologous recombination deficiency (HRD).
Tumor cell survival is dependent on phosphate homeostasis, which requires high amounts of energy. Researchers have demonstrated that the silencing of xenotropic and polytropic retrovirus receptor 1 (XPR1) led to reduced tumor growth in an ovarian cancer cell line xenograft, and similar vulnerability was found in lung cancer.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of liver cancer, with a 5-year survival rate of 18%. Glypican-3 (GPC3) is a protein with high expression in HCC but not in healthy tissue, making it an interesting target for therapy.
Researchers from Bright Biologics LLC presented the discovery and preclinical characterization of a novel bispecific anti-Her2/anti-Trop2 antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), BB-201.
Researchers from Naya Biosciences Inc. and collaborators presented preclinical data on NY-303, a natural killer (NK) cell engager bispecific antibody targeting both GPC3 and NKp46. NKp46 is a cell surface receptor involved in NK cell activation and the elimination of target cancer cells.
Researchers from the U.K. have analyzed whole-genome sequencing data from 7,276 cases and 236,741 controls in the UK Biobank to perform gene-level and a variant-level exome-wide association study analysis to identify variants related to retinal detachment.
The bromodomain and extra terminal domain (BET) family of proteins, including BRD4, regulates the transcription of multiple proinflammatory and immunoregulatory genes. BRD4 is involved in immune-related disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Patients infected with hepatitis C have had the ability to rid their livers of the virus for some time, while patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection have been required to take medications for the rest of their lives in the hopes of just dampening damage to the liver caused by the virus. But, at The Liver Meeting 2024, Arbutus presented data from the phase IIa Im-prove study suggesting a cure might be on its way with its DNAi drug, which binds to the viral mRNA promoting its cutting, leading to loss of translation of the viral proteins.