News and Trends 3 Sep 2019 UK Biotech’s Personalized Immunotherapy gets €110M Series B Boost The UK company Achilles Therapeutics has raised €110M (£100M) to test its personalized cancer cell immunotherapies in humans for the first time. The large Series B round will fund two phase I/IIa clinical trials of Achilles’ preclinical immunotherapy which are expected to start this year: one in non-small cell lung cancer and the other in […] September 3, 2019 - 2 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 29 Aug 2019 Off-the-Shelf Kidney Cancer Immunotherapy More Than Doubles Recovery in Phase II An off-the-shelf cancer immunotherapy developed by the Swedish biotech Immunicum has eradicated kidney tumors in 11% of treated patients compared with just 4% of patients given standard treatments in a phase II trial. Immunicum is developing a cell immunotherapy to treat metastatic renal cell carcinoma. This advanced form of kidney cancer is particularly hard to […] August 29, 2019 - 3 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 12 Aug 2019 Manufacturing Delays Set Back Autolus’ CAR-T Programs by Five Months The UK biotech Autolus’ shares have slumped as construction delays from a new manufacturing site have pushed back its CAR-T cell immunotherapy programs. Autolus is developing treatments for blood cancer that involve engineering patients’ own immune cells to kill cancer cells, known as autologous CAR-T cell immunotherapies. Earlier this year, Autolus licensed a new manufacturing […] August 12, 2019 - 2 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 6 Aug 2019 ADC Therapeutics and SOPHiA Genetics Team Up to Personalize Cancer Treatment Two companies based in Lausanne, Switzerland — ADC Therapeutics and the genomics company SOPHiA Genetics — have signed a deal to identify patients most likely to respond to a blood cancer drug. ADC Therapeutics will send SOPHiA Genetics blood samples collected from an ongoing phase II trial. The trial is testing a treatment for patients […] August 6, 2019 - 2 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Interview 22 Jul 2019 Turning Shelved Drugs into a New Promise for Immuno-Oncology After working for 12 years at Merck, Catherine Pickering decided to take a risk and create iOnctura, a spin-out company exploring a new application in immuno-oncology for a drug candidate that had been shelved. In the last decade, there has been a massive boom in the development of cancer therapies that use and enhance the […] July 22, 2019 - 5 minutesmins - By Clara Rodríguez Fernández Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Startup Scout 19 Jul 2019 This Biotech Breaks Down ‘Undruggable’ Proteins to Treat Cancer In the Polish city of Wrocław, Captor Therapeutics is developing cancer treatments that destroy disease-causing proteins. Mission: To develop cancer treatments able to degrade proteins that are normally outside the reach of traditional drugs, called the ‘undruggable proteome’. Small molecule drugs are able to target a small minority of proteins in the cell, such as […] July 19, 2019 - 3 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 18 Jul 2019 Genmab’s Huge IPO Raises €450M to Develop Antibody Drugs The Danish biotech Genmab has made a big splash on the Nasdaq, raising a €450M ($506M) IPO to fuel its antibody drug programs in cancer, autoimmune diseases, and more. This IPO is one of the biggest in biotech history, behind the whopping €530M Nasdaq entry from US mRNA biotech Moderna last year. It’s also to […] July 18, 2019 - 2 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Startup Scout 12 Jul 2019 This Biotech Uses ‘Omics’ to Develop Treatments for Drug-Resistant Cancer Next time you travel to Barcelona, Spain, check out Aromics, a biotech that is using genomics and proteomics to develop treatments for cancers such as malignant mesothelioma, which can be caused by asbestos. Mission: To use omics technology to treat drug-resistant cancers, as well as to identify cancer biomarkers that could improve monitoring in clinical […] July 12, 2019 - 3 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 9 Jul 2019 Update: Swiss Biotech’s Series E Expanded to €271M to Commercialize Antibody-Guided Cancer Chemotherapy Update (09/07/2019): The Switzerland-based ADC Therapeutics has completed the final closing of a €271M ($303M) Series E round to finance the development of a phase II antibody-drug conjugate treatment for blood cancer. With its big Series E complete, the company is in a good financial position to prepare for the commercialization of its lead candidate […] July 9, 2019 - 3 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 9 Jul 2019 BioNTech Raises Whopping €290M to Fund Personalized mRNA Vaccines for Cancer In one of the biggest ever funding rounds in European biotech, the German company BioNTech has raised a Series B of €289.5M ($325M) to develop individualized cancer vaccines. BioNTech will use the money to fuel the clinical development of the company’s lead program — an individualized mRNA-based immunotherapy for treating melanoma, which completed a phase […] July 9, 2019 - 3 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 8 Jul 2019 Evotec Spinoff to Develop Cancer Drugs that Block DNA Repair Breakpoint Therapeutics, a spinoff from the German biotech Evotec, has raised €30M to develop drugs that block DNA repair mechanisms in drug-resistant cancers. Breakpoint Therapeutics aims to develop first-in-class drugs that kill cancer cells by sabotaging their DNA repair machinery. Having taken on a number of Evotec’s drug development programs, Breakpoint aims to have its […] July 8, 2019 - 2 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
Startup Scout 5 Jul 2019 This Biotech Helps the Immune System to Infiltrate and Destroy Tumors The Nice-based biotech company Yukin Therapeutics is developing drugs that can work together with checkpoint inhibitors to help the immune system smash tumors such as melanoma. Mission: To develop a drug that can change the tumor microenvironment to allow the immune system to infiltrate and destroy the tumor more effectively. This could give a big […] July 5, 2019 - 3 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email