For individuals who develop an unexpected psychosis, there is something to be said for testing them for autoimmune antibodies. And something against. At the 36th Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) this week, the topic was worth a controversy session, where speakers presented the pros and cons of the approach. Currently used tests have a specificity of 99%. But as Ester Coutinho, consultant neurologist at the University of Coimbra, pointed out, the validity of diagnostic tests depends on the prevalence of the disorder one is looking for as well. Coutinho estimated that autoimmune psychoses account for 1% of psychoses overall.

There are several pan-PIM kinase inhibitors in development for cancer indications, but startup Mysthera Therapeutics AG hopes to become the first biotech company to develop them in the autoimmune diseases space, having secured $3.5 million in seed capital from founding investor Forty51 Ventures.

Precede Biosciences Inc. emerged from stealth having raised $57 million in seed and series A financing to fund its genome-wide platform. The blood-based platform detects and provides critical insight into the biological activity of genes and pathways in diseased tissue to improve care and development of new therapeutics.

Synthetic, multi-epitope peptide vaccines are becoming an attractive universal influenza vaccine strategy. Longhorn Vaccines & Diagnostics LLC has created LHNVD-105, an influenza vaccine candidate consisting of unconjugated multi-epitope influenza peptides.

Atomwise Inc. has nominated a development candidate focused on TYK2 inhibition, discovered by leveraging its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery platform, Atomnet.

Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibition is a provenly effective strategy for the treatment of B-cell malignancies with several compounds approved such as ibrutinib, acalabrutinib or zanubrutinib. BTK also plays a central role in immunity and has thus emerged as a potential therapeutic target in autoimmune and inflammatory disorders.

The calcineurin inhibitor tacrolimus is an immunosuppressive drug frequently used to prevent transplant rejection in solid organ transplant patients. Tacrolimus acts by suppressing T-cell activity within and around the transplanted organ. However, this drug also inhibits T-cell function in the skin, contributing to a high incidence of skin cancer among transplant recipients.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), has awarded up to $37 million in funding to the Thymus Rejuvenation project, led by Thymmune Therapeutics Inc.