Tumour biology

Mutations in the ARID1A gene are present in more than 50% of ovarian clear cell carcinomas (OCCC), for which effective treatments are lacking. Scientists at The Wistar Institute discovered that loss of ARID1A function enhances a cellular stress response pathway that promotes survival of cancer cells, which become sensitive to pharmacological inhibition of this pathway.   […]

Anti-androgen therapy is commonly used to treat patients with advanced prostate cancer which has spread to the bones, however, the treatment may be fuelling bone cancer spread.  Dr Nathalie Bock from QUT Centre for Biomedical Technologies focused her research on bone metastases from breast and prostate cancers. The research team investigated its hypothesis that traditional anti-androgen therapy […]

Natural killer (NK) cell therapies have the potential to be an effective, off-the-shelf treatment for a range of cancers. Analysis of NK cell therapies, currently in development, reveals that 57% of these are allogeneic therapies, and although development in haematological indications is more advanced, there are a high number of therapies being investigated in solid tumours, says GlobalData, data […]

Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies and PhotonPharma have established a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for collaboration to develop Innocell, a novel tumour specific immunotherapy (a therapeutic vaccine) for solid tumours, which can help improve the speed to market for treatment.  To help in the cancer immunotherapy development process, PhotonPharma is using Terumo’s Mirasol (R) Pathogen Reduction Technology (PRT) in the manufacturing process. The […]

BridgeBio Pharma has entered a clinical collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb to evaluate the combination of BBP-398, a potentially best-in-class SHP2 inhibitor, with OPDIVO (nivolumab) in patients with advanced solid tumours with KRAS mutations with the hope of providing an effective new treatment option for patients with difficult-to-treat cancers.  The collaboration will also include the initiation of a […]

Avacta Group has dosed the first patient in its Phase I multicentre trial evaluating AVA6000, a novel pro-drug of Doxorubicin and the company’s first therapeutic based on its pre|CISION technology. The pre|CISION platform incorporates a substrate that is specifically cleaved by the protease fibroblast activation protein alpha (FAPa), which is upregulated in most solid tumours […]

In the UK, researchers Professor Andrew Beggs and Professor Gary Middleton from the Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy and the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences have partnered with Cancer Research UK in a target identification project for the Immuno-oncology Alliance, which translates discovery science into new therapeutics for cancer patients. The Immuno-oncology Alliance, formed […]

Exscientia and GT Apeiron Therapeutics have entered an R&D collaboration. Exscientia’s AI expertise will  be used to accelerate the discovery of multiple small molecule therapeutic drug candidates designed to selectively treat aberrant cell cycle driven cancers and build a pipeline of CDK novel therapies. This collaboration follows the design of multiple selective CDK7 compounds. The […]

Gadeta, a clinical-stage company developing gamma delta (γδ) T-cell receptor (TCR)-based immunotherapies for cancer patients, has announced the dosing of the first patient with GDT-002 (formerly labelled TEG002), a potential first-in-class cellular immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer. The multicentre Phase I/II study in collaboration with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Mass General Brigham Cancer Care […]

Corning Life Sciences will be hosting a virtual 3D Cell Culture Summit, June 16-17, that will bring together industry leaders and innovators to share ideas and information, and to discuss the future of 3D applications including spheroid, organoid and tissue models 3D workflow optimisation, trends, and innovation. Some of the topics covered include: Human Pluripotent […]