A co-research agreement between Ubix Therapeutics Inc. and Debiopharm International SA aimed at creating a new antibody degraducer conjugates drug modality to treat cancer will combine Ubix’s Degraducer molecule with Debiopharm’s antibody-drug conjugate linker Multilink to specifically target cancer cells.
Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) and Eisai Co. Ltd. inked a potential $3.1 billion agreement to co-develop and co-commercialize the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) MORAb-202 for advanced solid tumors. Eisai’s first ADC, MORAb-202 pairs the company’s anti-folate receptor alpha (FRα) antibody with the Tokyo-based firm’s anticancer agent eribulin using an enzyme cleavable linker. It is characterized as a potential best-in-class candidate and is under investigation for tumors that include endometrial, ovarian, lung and breast cancers in two studies: a phase I effort in Japan and a phase I/II experiment in the U.S. The companies plan to enter the registrational stage of development as early as 2022.
Kahr Medical Ltd.’s $46.5 million financing provides runway to advance its multifunctional immunotherapeutic pipeline. The proceeds will be used to for clinical development of its lead asset, DSP-107, a first-in-class CD47x41BB targeting fusion protein to treat solid tumors and blood cancers through multiple phase I/II studies.
Artios Pharma Ltd. plans to begin the first clinical trials of a POLQ inhibitor class cancer drug later this year. There are a handful of companies working on POLQ inhibitor drugs, the name of the gene that encodes the enzyme DNA polymerase theta, but it looks like Artios has taken a head start following the publication of the supportive study in Nature Communications.
Just days after Hifibio Therapeutics Inc. closed a $75 million series D financing, Fibrogen Inc. has agreed to pay the antibody specialist $25 million up front and as much as $1.1 billion in milestones for rights to multiple preclinical programs for autoimmune diseases and cancer. The deal includes exclusive rights to Galectin-9 programs, in which the lead asset is expected to enter clinical development in the first quarter of 2023, and options to license all assets in Hifibio's CXCR5 and CCR8 programs.
Barely a week after cutting a deal with Beigene Ltd. that included an up-front of $45 million cash, Shoreline Biosciences Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc.-owned Kite are collaborating to develop allogeneic cell therapies in a deal that could bring Shoreline more than $2.3 billion plus royalties.
Multinational antibody specialist Hifibio Therapeutics Inc. closed an oversubscribed $75 million series D financing round to move its anti-TNFR2 antibody HFB-200301 and the anti-OX-40 antibody HFB-301001 to phase I trials by the end of this year.
Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. has received conditional approval from Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) for its oncolytic virus Delytact (teserpaturev) to treat malignant glioma.
Zai Lab Ltd. and Macrogenics Inc. have announced a collaboration and license agreement involving up to four immuno-oncology molecules in a deal potentially worth upward of $1.5 billion. The deal makes sense as both are upcoming companies at around the same stage in development – making progress in oncology with first products recently approved by regulators.
DUBLIN – Mnemo Therapeutics SAS emerged from stealth mode having raised €75 million (US$91 million) in a series A financing round to take forward a new chimeric antigen T-cell (CAR T) platform, which is focused on selectively targeting both solid and liquid tumors expressing a previously undescribed class of antigens and on improving the persistence and fitness of CAR T cells.
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