While several companies have been finding success in the TCR-T cell therapy space — with Intellia having its treatment accepted by the FDA last year — another company is using machine learning to get in on the action and find a candidate to bring toward the clinic.
ImmunoScape, a biotech based in Singapore and California, has raised $14 million in a fresh round of financing. The company itself was founded in 2016 as a spinout from the Singapore-based Agency for Science, Technology and Research, setting up its US operations in San Diego in 2020.
In an interview with Endpoints News, ImmunoScape CEO Choon-Peng Ng said the upstart is focused on the discovery and eventual development of TCR-T cell therapies in the oncology space, with a focus on solid tumors. ImmunoScape uses a machine learning-based technology platform that analyzes data from its lab to investigate and eventually develop TCR-T cell therapies.
While the company has not unveiled the details of its therapies just yet, Ng noted that it does have some targets identified and is centering on treatments related to breast cancer, prostate and lung cancer. He said that ImmunoScape will choose its assets and insert them into the pipeline by the end of the year, with the biotech planning to have an IND filed by 2024.
The $14 million raise will be going toward expediting development efforts and getting a candidate closer to the clinic. To date, ImmunoScape has managed to raise $41 million in total through other fundraising efforts, including $14 million last year. Ng said that he would not rule out any future funding, and while he does recognize that the IPO can be tough to navigate currently, he said that the company will be keeping its eye on the market.
As for the immediate future, Peng Ng told Endpoints that, apart from pursuing its IND, they will also be hoping to partner with other groups and companies that may have an interest to develop its assets.
“At the end of the day, (it’s) fulfilling the mission in bringing as many of these novel therapeutics to the clinic. And we recognize that we are a small team, and we want to do the best we can for what we can manage,” he said.
Ng also noted that ImmunoScape is separating itself from the pack due to its machine learning technology that can discover targets at scale and screen hundreds of epitopes. Also, by discovering naturally occurring TCR antigens, Ng believes that this will give the company’s therapies a more positive safety profile.
Anzu Partners led the round, with Amgen Ventures and Singapore-based EDBI also participating.
APAC is the fastest growing region globally for cell & gene therapy trials representing more than a third of all cell & gene studies globally, with China leading in the region.
APAC is the leading location globally for CAR-T trials with China attracting ~60% of all CAR-T trials globally between 2015-2022. The number of CAR-T trials initiated by Western companies has rapidly increased in recent years (current CAGR of about 60%), with multiple targets being explored including CD19, CD20, CD22, BCMA, CD30, CD123, CD33, CD38, and CD138.
Right around the beginning of the year, we got a close-up look at what happens after a boom ripples through biotech. The crash of life sciences stocks in Q1 was heard around the world.
In the months since, we’ve seen the natural Darwinian down cycle take effect. Reverse mergers made a comeback, with more burned out shells to go public at a time IPOs and road shows are out of favor. And no doubt some of the more recent arrivals on the investing side of the business are finding greener pastures.
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Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”
The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.
The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.
On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.
At Klick Health’s first Ideas Exchange conference with biotech and pharma industry insiders since before the pandemic began, it was no surprise many conversations included Covid topics. Yet while vaccines and treatments were discussed, so too were the effects on drug development, federal responses, health inequities — and what to do now and next.
George Yancopoulos, chief scientist and cofounder of Regeneron, opened the conference responding to a question from Acorda CEO Ron Cohen about the spotlight on the industry during Covid and some of the “flak” biopharma has taken in the past.
Almost a year after the FDA gave the green light to LA-based Aadi Bioscience’s first drug, the biotech is looking to private investors to keep itself going.
The oncology player announced Thursday that it has engaged with both new and existing investors in a PIPE financing — selling 3.3 million shares at $12.50 a share, the biotech’s closing price at Nasdaq on Wednesday. The company is also selling off pre-funded warrants to purchase over 2.4 million more shares at $12.4999 per pre-funded warrant.
FDA’s outside advisors voted in favor of Ferring Pharmaceuticals’ RBX2660, an experimental poop-based drug implant that the company says would be the first microbiota-based live biotherapeutic to receive an FDA green light.
That was a point repeatedly discussed during the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, meeting Thursday when evaluating Ferring’s fecal microbiota transplant, or FMT, for reducing the recurrence of Clostridioides difficile infection in adults who have received antibiotics. Multiple members brought up the need for a regulated product amid a landscape of unregulated FMTs already happening in clinical care.
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The first lab-made antibody medicine was approved in 1986 — it bound to an antigen known as CD3 on T cells and was meant to prevent kidney transplant rejection. While antibody technology improved, most antibodies were made as blocking agents, neutering clamps that attacked cells and proteins.
But then scientists got creative with their engineering. They made antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs for short, which attached toxins or drugs to the antibodies, enabling them to kill cells. Then they made CAR-T therapies, which attached a patient’s T cell to the targeting fragment of an antibody, to destroy cancer cells.
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When Ionis and AstraZeneca unveiled the first round of mid-stage data for their antisense PCSK9 drug, Mene Pangalos, AstraZeneca’s EVP of biopharmaceuticals R&D, underscored the drug’s “potential best-in-class efficacy profile.”
But now that the second batch is in, it appears AZD8233 isn’t hitting the mark after all.
Ionis announced Friday morning that although the candidate, also dubbed ION449, met the primary endpoint in the Phase IIb SOLANO trial, its partners at AstraZeneca have decided not to move it into Phase III studies because the “results did not achieve pre-specified efficacy criteria.”
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