On February 17, 2020 Arix Bioscience plc (LSE: ARIX) ("Arix Bioscience"), a global venture capital company focused on investing in and building breakthrough biotech companies, reported that one of its portfolio companies, Imara Inc., ("Imara"), has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") for a proposed initial public offering ("IPO") in the United States of shares of its common stock (Press release, Arix Bioscience, FEB 17, 2020, View Source;imara-files-for-proposed-initial-public-offering-in-the-united-states-301005809.html [SID1234554400]). All shares to be sold in the offering will be offered by Imara. Imara has applied to list its common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol "IMRA". The offering is subject to market conditions, and there can be no assurance as to whether or when the offering may be completed, or as to the actual size or terms of the offering. A further announcement will be made in due course.

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A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This announcement does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities, and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of that jurisdiction. Any offers, solicitations or offers to buy, or any sales of securities will be made in accordance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

The securities referred to in this release are to be offered only by means of a prospectus. When available, copies of the preliminary prospectus can be obtained from Morgan Stanley, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York 10014, Attention: Prospectus Dept.; Citigroup, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York, 11717 or by telephone at (800) 831-9146; or SVB Leerink, One Federal Street, 37th Floor, Boston, Massachusetts, 02110, Attention: Syndicate Department, by telephone at (800) 808-7525, ext. 6132, or by email at [email protected].

This announcement includes information that is inside information as defined in Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No.596/2014.The person responsible for arranging for the release of this announcement on behalf of Arix Bioscience plc is Robert Lyne, General Counsel.

On February 17, 2020 PTC Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: PTCT) reported that the Company will host a webcast conference call to report its fourth quarter and year-end 2019 financial results and provide an update on the company’s business and outlook on Monday, March 2, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. (ET) after the closing of the market (Press release, PTC Therapeutics, FEB 17, 2020, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ptc-therapeutics-to-host-conference-call-to-discuss-fourth-quarter-and-year-end-2019-financial-results-301006141.html [SID1234554399]).

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The call can be accessed by dialing (877) 303-9216 (domestic) or (973) 935-8152 (international) five minutes prior to the start of the call and providing the passcode 1732477. A live, listen-only webcast of the conference call can be accessed on the investor relations section of the PTC website at www.ptcbio.com. A webcast replay of the call will be available approximately two hours after completion of the call and will be archived on the company’s website for 30 days following the call.

On February 17, 2020 BiomX, a microbiome company developing both natural and engineered phage therapies, reported that the company will present pre-clinical data from its colorectal cancer program at the plenary session of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Microbiome, Viruses, and Cancer Conference taking place from February 21-24, 2020, in Orlando, Florida (Press release, BiomX, FEB 17, 2020, View Source [SID1234554398]). BiomX’s colorectal cancer program utilizes phage to target bacteria that are naturally present within tumors, with the aim of converting ‘cold’ tumors to ‘hot’ by delivering a payload (i.e. an immunostimulatory payload) to the tumor and eradicating tumor-protective bacteria.

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Details of the presentation are as follows:

Abstract Title: "Novel Phages Targeting The Intratumor Associated Bacteria Fusobacterium Nucleatum"
Date: Sunday, February 23, 2020
Time: 10:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. ET
Plenary Session 5: Oncogenic Viruses, Part 2
Poster Number: B20

About Phage Therapy
Bacteriophage, or phage, are viruses that target bacteria and are considered inert to mammalian cells. Phage are designed to target and kill specific bacterial species or strains without disrupting other bacteria or the healthy microbiota. All of BiomX’s phage-based product candidates derive from its proprietary platform, which is first used to discover and validate the association of specific bacterial strains with human diseases or conditions, and is then used to develop rationally-designed phage combinations ("cocktails") of naturally occurring or synthetic phage to target pathogenic bacteria. The phage cocktails contain multiple phage with complementary functions optimized through in vitro and in vivo testing.

On February 17, 2020 Celyad (Euronext Brussels and Paris, and Nasdaq: CYAD), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of CAR-T cell-based therapies, reported that the company plans to participate at the following conferences in February and March 2020 (Press release, Celyad, FEB 17, 2020, View Source [SID1234554397]):

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9th Annual SVB Leerink Global Healthcare Conference
Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Presentation time:3:30 p.m. ET
Location: New York, New York
Webcast: A live and archived webcast of the presentation will be available in the Events & Webcasts section of the Celyad website

3rd Annual CAR-TCR Summit Europe
Date: Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Time: 12:30 p.m. GMT
Location: London, United Kingdom

27th International Molecular Med Tri-Conference
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Presentation Time:2:35 p.m. PT
Location: San Francisco, California

Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s 5th Annual Immuno-Oncology Summit Europe 2020
Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Presentation time: 9:05 a.m. GMT
Location: London, United Kingdom

BioCapital Europe 2020
Date: Thursday, March 12, 2020
Presentation time: 3:50 p.m. CET
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

VFB Congress Happening
Date: Saturday, March 28, 2020
Presentation time: 1:40 p.m. CET
Location: Antwerp, Belgium

On February 17, 2020 MD Anderson reported that Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) accounts for 14% of all lung cancers and is often rapidly resistant to chemotherapy, resulting in poor clinical outcomes (Press release, MD Anderson, FEB 17, 2020, View Source [SID1234554395]). Treatment has changed little for decades, but a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found that chemotherapy results in increased heterogeneity within the tumor, leading to the evolution of multiple resistance mechanisms.

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The research team, led by Lauren Averett Byers, M.D., associate professor of Thoracic/Head & Neck Medical Oncology, published their findings today in Nature Cancer. Early results were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting 2018 in Chicago.

"There have been few therapeutic advances in the past 30 years, and platinum-based chemotherapy remains the backbone of the standard of care. As a result, five-year survival is less than 7% across all stages," Byers said. "Most patients respond well to platinum chemotherapy initially, but relapse within a few months. There are no highly effective second-line therapies when the tumor recurs."

The team found that after treatment, SCLC tumors rapidly evolve. Before treatment, SCLC is largely homogenous, with the same type of cells found throughout the tumor. Within weeks to months of treatment, many new and different types of cells appear; this diversity within the tumor is called intratumoral heterogeneity.

"Because you end up with a cancer that has multiple resistance mechanisms turned on at the same time in different cells, the cancer becomes much harder to treat," Byers said. "Some cells might be resistant through one mechanism or pathway, and other cells might be resistant through a different one. Treatment targeting one type of resistance will only kill a subset of cancer cells."

A novel method

One challenge in studying why and how SCLC chemoresistance occurs is due to the fact that biopsy or surgery isn’t required to confirm cancer recurrence for most patients. This leaves investigators with few SCLC samples with which to conduct genomic and biomarker analyses of drug-resistant tumors.

To overcome the lack of recurrent SCLC samples, the team developed novel disease models by isolating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from a simple blood draw. The cells, placed under the mouse’s skin, develop tumors representative of the patient from whom they were derived. These SCLC models, called circulating tumor cell-derived xenografts (CDX), are unique to each patient and provide an opportunity to assess treatment response to therapy, as well as changes that may occur after therapy.

The investigators performed single-cell RNA sequencing on 14 CDX models to identify gene expression differences between individual cells from chemotherapy-sensitive CDX tumors compared to those that remain resistant. They also performed single-cell sequencing directly on circulating tumor cells retrieved from one patient before treatment, during treatment and after relapse.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time in solid tumors that this type of approach has been applied directly to patient blood samples with RNA sequencing analysis of individual circulating tumor cells," Byers said. "We looked at the tumor model grown from the same patient at the single-cell level before and after treatment, and we saw the same cell diversity in the circulating tumor cells from the patient."

Clinical implications and future research

Byers’ lab is beginning to study what causes SCLC to evolve and develop intratumoral heterogeneity to see if the evolution can be stopped or prevented. Clinically, they hope to investigate aggressive early treatment approaches that bring new drugs to patients in the maintenance phase of treatment, before their cancer comes back. Currently, most clinical trials for SCLC enroll patients after their tumor recurs and has become chemoresistant.

"If you look at a lot of the available treatments for relapsed small cell lung cancer, it’s really a minority of patients where you see any response – this study may explain why," Byers said. "The next step is to design trials that get drugs to patients earlier, before the cancer has a chance to evolve and become more complex and harder to treat."

A full list of collaborating researchers and their disclosures are included in the paper.

The research was supported in part by the Lung Cancer Moon Shot, part of MD Anderson’s Moon Shots Program, a collaborative effort to accelerate scientific discoveries into clinical advances that save patients’ lives. The study also was supported by: National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute grants CCSG P30-CA016672, T32 CA009666, Lung SPORE 5 P50 CA070907, R01-CA207295, U01-CA213273, U01 CA231844 and P30CA042014 (Huntsman Cancer Institute); The Department of Defense LC170171; ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper) Young Investigator Award; The MD Anderson Cancer Center Small Cell Lung Cancer Working Group and Abell Hangar Foundation Distinguished Professor Endowment; MD Anderson Cancer Center Physician Scientist Award; The Hope Foundation SWOG/ITSC Pilot Program; an Andrew Sabin Family Fellowship; and The Rexanna Foundation for Fighting Lung Cancer.