News round-up for 9-13 January by DDW Digital Content Editor Diana Spencer.
Once again, research partnerships and licence agreements have dominated the news this week, as drug discovery companies seek new ways to combine their expertise to address unmet medical needs.
The top stories:
Alliance to develop circular RNA-based therapeutics
Esperovax and Ginkgo Bioworks have agreed a partnership to develop circular RNAs (circRNAs) for a variety of therapeutic applications.
Collaboration to identify up to 10 novel target-antibody pairs
AbbVie and Immunome have agreed a worldwide collaboration with the aim of discovering up to 10 novel antibody-target pairs arising from three specified tumour types using Immunome’s Discovery Engine.
AstraZeneca gains rights to novel aldosterone synthase inhibitor
AstraZeneca has entered into an agreement to acquire CinCor Pharma, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focused on developing treatments for resistant and uncontrolled hypertension as well as chronic kidney disease.
Research partners will target neurodegenerative disease
X-Chem and Sironax have agreed a research partnership, in which X-Chem will use its DEL platform to support Sironax’s drug discovery pipeline.
Cambrian expands fibrosis pipeline
Cambrian BioPharma has unveiled its latest pipeline company, Isterian Biotech. The preclinical start-up is working towards the development of first-in-class small molecule inhibitors of transglutaminase 2 (TG2), one of the major crosslinking enzymes in the human body, which becomes more active during ageing, resulting in fibrotic diseases.