Failure of integrin inhibitors in clinical trials can be avoided by redesigning the chemical conformation of these proteins, as shown by a study led by Timothy Springer, a professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Boston Children's Hospital, and one of the winners of the 2022 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.
CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, will provide seed funding of up to $4.8 million to Intravacc BV to advance the development of a broadly protective betacoronavirus vaccine candidate, which can be delivered intranasally.
Hanall Biopharma Co. Ltd. has clarified that the new FcRn inhibitor IMVT-1402, unveiled by its licensed partner Immunovant Inc. as a new development program for autoimmune diseases, is a compound discovered and developed by Hanall, HL-161ANS.
Endpoint Health Inc. has announced a new precision immunology program targeting inflammation mediated by tissue factor (TF)-dependent intracellular signaling.
Simcere Pharmaceutical Group has out-licensed its autoimmune drug candidate SIM-0278 for all indications to Almirall SA in a deal worth up to $507 million. Simcere granted exclusive global rights to the candidate to Almirall for development and commercialization excluding mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. In return, Almirall will pay Simcere $15 million up front.
Imunon Inc. has reported partial results from an ongoing nonhuman primate study designed to examine the immunogenicity of its proprietary Placcine vaccine (PL-COV). The data support Placcine as a viable alternative to mRNA vaccines.
Tumor mutational burden (TMB), a biomarker used to assess whether a patient will respond to immunotherapy, needs to be recalculated in order to be useful for patients of Asian or African descent. Scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found a significant bias in the estimated TMB values affecting these populations and adjusted them for those patients.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022 was awarded to Svante Pääbo today "for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution." Pääbo, who is currently the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues overcame extreme technical challenges to sequence the DNA of ancient hominids – because after tens of thousands of years, there is no such thing as aging well for DNA.
Simcere Pharmaceutical Group has out-licensed its autoimmune drug candidate SIM-0278 for all indications to Almirall SA in a deal worth up to $507 million. Simcere granted exclusive global rights to the candidate to Almirall for development and commercialization excluding mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. In return, Almirall will pay Simcere $15 million up front.
A research consortium comprised of XL-protein GmbH, Wacker Chemie AG and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) will develop a novel long-acting immunosuppressive anti-CD40 antibody fragment for the selective suppression of organ rejection, in particular in the area of cardiac xenotransplantation.