On April 8, 2020 SOM Biotech reported its management team with the appointment of Catherine Scart as Chief Medical Officer and Kevin McAllister as Chief Scientific Officer (Press release, SOM Biotech, APR 8, 2020, View Source;utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=som-biotech-strengthens-its-management-team [SID1234558681]).

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Therefore, Catherine Scart MD will join SOM Biotech management team as Chief Medical Officer and will assume responsibility for the company´s clinical trials and lead the pipeline development with a special focus on leveraging on SOMs proprietary technology to develop valuable drug candidates. Prior to joining SOM Biotech, Catherine Scart served as Head of Clinical Development at Bioproject, a French R&D company where she led the clinical development plan and ensured the execution of clinical trials, particularly in the areas of neurodegenerative and orphan diseases. Catherine Scart has a strong background working for international biopharmaceutical companies providing key medical and scientific support to launch innovative compounds, managing all processes needed to ensure the effective and successful completion of the companies´ pipeline development strategy.

Kevin McAllister PhD MBA will join SOM Biotech management team as Chief Scientific Officer, contributing with his extensive experience in drug discovery and development to strengthen the nonclinical and clinical scientific and technical expertise. Kevin McAllister joins SOM Biotech from Neurenable GmbH, where he was Managing Director and consulting to biotech in the EU and USA. Prior to this Kevin was Executive Director in the Neuroscience Disease Area at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, and Principal Medical Scientific Expert in the Novartis Neuroscience Clinical Development Franchise.

Raul Insa, CEO of SOM Biotech: "I´m delighted that Catherine and Kevin are joining SOM Biotech. Both bring very valuable and extensive experience to complement the expertise of our existing team. They will play a key role as we continue with the progress of our pipeline and with the implementation of our strategic plan to grow and position SOM Biotech as a leading biopharma worldwide".

On April 8, 2020 T-Cure Bioscience, Inc., a privately held company focused on developing autologous T cell receptor (TCR) therapy products for the treatment of solid tumors, reported that the Company has entered into an exclusive, worldwide license with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for intellectual property related to a TCR-based product candidate for the treatment of Kita-Kyushu lung cancer antigen 1 (KK-LC-1) expressing malignancies, such as gastric, lung, and breast cancers (Press release, T-Cure Bioscience, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556951]). T-Cure anticipates the KK-LC-1 TCR therapy will enter a multi-site Phase 1 clinical study in the third quarter of 2020 under the direction of Christian S. Hinrichs, M.D., Principal Investigator at the Experimental Transplantation and Immunology Branch (ETIB) at NCI.

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To support the preclinical and clinical research to develop the TCR product and future products targeting KK-LC-1, T-Cure has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the NCI. Under the CRADA, T-Cure will work to identify additional therapy candidates targeting KK-LC-1 using the Company’s proprietary TCR discovery platform, iSORT. The Company also intends to conduct an independent Phase 1 clinical trial in 2021 to further assess the safety and efficacy of the licensed KK-LC-1 TCR.

"The KK-LC-1 TCR technology forms the foundation of a new treatment strategy for a certain common, difficult to treat cancers," stated NCI’s Dr. Hinrichs.

"We are extremely excited to work with Dr. Hinrichs and his team at NCI to advance this novel TCR product candidate through preclinical and clinical development," stated Gang Zeng, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of T-Cure. "Dr. Hinrichs’ extensive experience in the discovery and development of novel adoptive T-cell therapies for cancer will be invaluable as we advance this program. Of note, the TCR was isolated from the tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes of a patient who had a complete response to an immunotherapy without any toxicities. As a result, we believe it holds great promise for engineering patients’ immune cells to effectively target and destroy cancer cells without harming healthy tissue."

On April 8, 2020 Biogen Inc. (Nasdaq:BIIB) reported it will report first quarter 2020 financial results Wednesday, April 22, 2020, before the financial markets open (Press release, Biogen, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556232]).

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Following the release of the financials, the Company will host a live webcast with Biogen management at 8:00 a.m. ET. To access the live webcast, please go to the investors section of Biogen’s website at View Source Following the live webcast, an archived version of the call will be available on the website.

On April 8, 2020 Cytokinetics, Incorporated (Nasdaq:CYTK) reported that Robert I. Blum, President and Chief Executive Officer, is scheduled to participate in a virtual fireside chat at the 19th Annual Needham Virtual Healthcare Conference on Wednesday, April 15, at 10:40 AM EST (Press release, Cytokinetics, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556231]).

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Interested parties may access the live webcast of this presentation by visiting the Investors & Media section of the Cytokinetics website at www.cytokinetics.com. The webcast replay of the presentation will be archived on the Presentations page within the Investors & Media section of Cytokinetics’ website for 90 days following the conclusion of the event.

On April 8, 2020 Avectas reported that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued U.S. Patent No. 10,612,042, which is central to the company’s cell engineering technology, Solupore and expands Avectas’ global Intellectual Property portfolio (Press release, Avectas, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556221]). This patent covers an approach for delivering a payload, such as a protein and/or nucleic acid, across a plasma membrane of a cell.

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Avectas is a cell engineering technology business developing a unique delivery platform to enable the ex-vivo manufacture of gene-modified cell therapy products, which retain high in-vivo functionality. Avectas’ Solupore cell engineering technology has been developed to address challenges encountered with the manufacture of autologous and allogeneic cellular therapy products.

"Our patented cell engineering platform leverages a new mechanism to permeabilize the cell membrane and to enable the delivery of therapeutic molecules into the cell, enabling the production of functionally fitter cells to recognise and attack cancers," said Michael Maguire, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Avectas. "This granted patent is an important component in our IP portfolio, protecting value in our cell engineering platform. We look forward to continuing the development of Solupore to address the tremendous need for a new cell engineering technology for next-generation cell therapies."

This announcement comes at a time when Avectas has recently announced several collaborations this year. In March, Avectas announced a collaboration with Vycellix to advance next-generation solutions for the optimized manufacture of cell and gene therapies. In February, Avectas entered a Collaboration agreement with the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) based in Toronto, Canada to accelerate the translation of Avectas’ non-viral cell engineering platform (Solupore) into the clinic and in January Avectas joined the new NK Cell Centre of Excellence at Karolinska Institute as a partner.

About Solupore:

Solupore is a non-viral, cell engineering technology that permeabilizes the target cell membrane and allows efficient transport of cargo into cells whilst retaining very high levels of cell viability and functionality. The Solupore technology is designed for use with mRNA, DNA, and proteins, including gene-editing tools such as CRISPR and combination thereof. Solupore achieves excellent engineering efficiencies for delivery of these payloads to primary T cells and NK cells for immuno-oncology and gene editing applications.