On October 14, 2021 Pillar Biosciences, an innovative, next-generation sequencing (NGS) solutions, in-vitro diagnostics company, reported that it has entered into an agreement with Labcorp (NYSE: LH), a leading global life sciences company, to provide genomic testing for people with cancer (Press release, Pillar Biosciences, OCT 14, 2021, View Source [SID1234591250]).

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Under the agreement, Pillar Biosciences will provide the oncoReveal Essential Myeloproliferative Neoplasm (MPN) panel. Using NGS, the test simultaneously measures for DNA mutations across multiple genes.

"Collaborating with Labcorp makes available a targeted NGS testing solution to accurately diagnose and monitor people with cancer who are suspected of having myeloproliferative neoplasms, which are diseases of the blood and bone marrow," said Laura Beggrow, Chief Business Officer at Pillar Biosciences. "This collaboration presents a broad market opportunity and bolsters our mission to make precision medicine accessible to all by providing high-quality, affordable specialty NGS testing capabilities."

"Our collaboration with Pillar Biosciences allows us to provide an accurate, efficient and scalable solution to patients with blood and bone marrow diseases through a multiplex targeted gene panel," said Dr. Marcia Eisenberg, Chief Scientific Officer at Labcorp and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Pillar Biosciences. "Offering this specialty oncology assay will enable patients and health care providers to make the most-informed and best-possible treatment decisions."

On October 14, 2021 MAIA Biotechnology, Inc., a targeted therapy, immuno-oncology company focused on developing potential first-in-class oncology drugs ("MAIA"), reported that it has raised an additional $6.2 million in an equity offering at $8/share (Press release, MAIA Biotechnology, OCT 14, 2021, View Source [SID1234591249]). The proceeds of the financing will advance the company’s programs and will support the initiation of a Phase 2 clinical trial (THIO-101) evaluating the administration of THIO followed by cemiplimab in patients with advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC). The THIO-101 trial is expected to begin this year.

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"We are excited to have closed this latest financing round, which brings MAIA additional capital as we continue to advance our THIO program," said Vlad Vitoc, M.D., MAIA’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We appreciate the continued support of our high-quality investors who share our vision developing novel cancer therapies aimed at overcoming treatment resistant diseases."

About the Phase 2 Clinical Trial in Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)

This trial (THIO-101) will be the first to test THIO’s immune system activation by administering THIO in advance of administration of the checkpoint inhibitor (co-developed by Regeneron and Sanofi), potentially allowing for immune activation and PD-1 sensitivity to take effect. The trial will test the hypothesis that low doses of THIO administered prior to checkpoint inhibitor treatment will enhance and prolong immune response in patients with advanced NSCLC who previously did not respond or progressed after first-line treatment regimen containing a checkpoint inhibitor.

The THIO-101 trial will assess the safety, mechanistic activity and immune system activation of four THIO dose levels, each in separate arms. Each dosing arm will then be evaluated further for efficacy based on Overall Response Rate (ORR), Duration of Response (DoR), Progression Free Survival (PFS) and Overall Survival (OS). Additional patients may be recruited for further clinical evaluation in any of the THIO arms based on safety and clinical benefit. Each arm of the trial will enroll up to 41 evaluable patients.

About THIO

THIO (6-thio-dG, 6-thio-2’-deoxyguanosine) is a potentially first-in-class small molecule that, to our knowledge, is the only cancer telomere targeting agent currently in development. THIO is believed to selectively target telomerase-positive cancer cells, which account for more than 85% of human cancers. Data from pre-clinical studies showed that THIO’s activity was shown to be specific to tumor types with active telomerase, an enzyme that is silent in most healthy cells. Studies to date also showed that telomerase recognizes THIO and selectively incorporates it into the telomeres in tumor cells. Once incorporated, THIO compromises the telomere structure and function, leading to ‘uncapping’ of the chromosome ends, which results in rapid tumor cell death. Low doses of THIO, followed by anti-PD-L1 or anti-PD1 therapy, completely eliminated advanced tumors in pre-clinical models and produced cancer cell-specific immune memory, where the immune system continued to be active against the cancer cells after extended periods of time, with no additional treatment. These results support the hypothesis that demonstrate how the THIO-produced telomere stress increases innate sensing and adaptive anti-tumor immunity, and provides a strong rationale for sequentially combining telomere-targeted therapy with immunotherapy. THIO is investigational and has not been approved yet for any use by regulatory authorities.

About Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. It is estimated that, in 2020, more than 2.2 million new cases were diagnosed globally, including 228,000 new cases in the U.S. Approximately 85% of all lung cancers are NSCLC and an estimated 80% of these cases are telomerase positive. While immunotherapies have transformed advanced NSCLC treatment in recent years, there remains a significant unmet need to optimize treatment of patients and offer additional clinical options.

On October 14, 2021 Kojin Therapeutics Inc., a company developing new targeted therapeutics based on cell state and ferroptosis biology, reported the appointment of Luba Greenwood as Chief Executive Officer (Press release, Kojin Therapeutics, OCT 14, 2021, View Source [SID1234591248]). Greenwood, who has served on Kojin’s board of directors since June 2021, joins Kojin’s co-founder Vasanthi Viswanathan and Chief Scientific Officer Kay Ahn in leading the company’s vision and growing its women-led executive team.

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Greenwood is a leading figure in healthcare with vast experience as an executive, company builder, and investor in therapeutics, life sciences, and tech sectors. She has co-founded biotech and digital health companies in immunotherapy, women’s health, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the microbiome space, and as a life sciences and biotech expert, lectures at Harvard University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Her leadership roles have spanned Roche, Google, and Pfizer and most recently Greenwood served as a Managing Partner at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s venture fund, Binney Street Capital, a venture arm she founded to further Dana-Farber’s mission of developing treatments for incurable cancers.

"With a focus on oncology, immunology, and neurology, I’ve had the privilege to access and witness the latest breakthrough advancements," said Luba Greenwood, CEO of Kojin Therapeutics. "From the outset, Kojin’s differentiated platform and modality stood apart, and I knew I wanted to be a part of this revolutionary science and the impact it will have on drug discovery. As a board member I was able to get to know Kojin’s approach and the incredible team behind it, and I’m honored to serve as CEO as we move forward and create transformative medicines for patients."

In June 2021, Kojin launched with a $60 Million Series A to accelerate its drug discovery platform based on its groundbreaking approach to cell state and ferroptosis biology to develop novel, targeted therapeutics. Since then, the company has accelerated its platform and partnerships with a focus on hard-to-treat cancers, immunology, and fibrosis.

"Luba has been a driving force behind Kojin’s mission and growth trajectory. She brings a collaborative leadership style that is especially valuable for early stage biotech companies bringing interdisciplinary science and technology together," said Stuart Schreiber, co-founder of Kojin Therapeutics. "We now have a very clear indication of where we will prioritize our platform and we’re thrilled to have Luba implementing this vision as she leads our talented team."

Greenwood is committed to advancing women in biotechnology and has been a recipient of several awards and honors for her work in the community, including the Science Club for Girls Catalyst Award for her commitment to advocating for women in science and technology.

"We’re incredibly proud to add Luba to our executive team, especially in an industry where chief women executives remain rare," said Vasanthi Viswanathan, co-founder and Head of Discovery Biology of Kojin Therapeutics. "Luba is an inspirational leader who personifies a winning combination of values, experience and perspective that will allow her to fully develop Kojin’s platform and partnering potential while simultaneously steering our programs into the clinic. It is a privilege to have a partner at the helm who so deeply believes in the founding mission of Kojin — transforming the lives of patients by developing a completely new category of therapeutics that work by modulating ferroptosis biology."

Kojin is focused on building out exceptional in-house biology and computational capabilities to rapidly advance its science. Since its launch, the company has more than doubled in size and will be moving into its own headquarters located in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood in February 2022. The company is tripling its machine learning efforts and actively looking to hire computational biologists and chemists.

On Sunday, October 17 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern, Greenwood will be moderating a panel at HLTH 2021 to discuss investment trends in patient experience and engagement.

On October 14, 2021 Abalos Therapeutics reported an extension to its Series A funding round bringing the total raised in this round to EUR 43 million (USD 50 million) (Press release, Abalos Therapeutics, OCT 14, 2021, View Source [SID1234591247]). The extension was led by Seventure Partners with support from Coparion, Ventura BioMed Investors and Hx Bio Ventures as well as contributions from existing investors from the initial Series A round including Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF), Gründerfonds Ruhr, NRW.BANK and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF). The financing underscores the potential of Abalos’ differentiated immuno-virotherapy approach to generate a maximal immune response specifically targeted against a patient’s cancer and its metastases. The proceeds will enable the company to advance its first product candidate into a Phase 1/2 trial in multiple solid tumors including the expansion cohorts to demonstrate early signs of clinical efficacy as well as fund further pipeline expansion.

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"Since the closing of our initial Series A financing round, we have achieved significant progress in the development of our product candidates and built a leadership team of drug development and immuno-oncology experts that support our goal of bringing this unique therapeutic modality to cancer patients," said Dr. Marcus Kostka, CEO of Abalos Therapeutics. "We value this commitment from our new and current investors that will enable our lead arenavirus-based program to enter clinical evaluation with the goal of establishing clinical proof of concept."

"Abalos is developing a powerful new class of immuno-virotherapeutics to treat cancer. Their product candidates have the potential to treat a range of solid cancers and also to increase the effect of approved immuno-oncology drugs," said Annegret de Baey, Venture Partner at Seventure Partners.

"We are very excited to see such a distinct approach in the crowded immuno-oncology space and look forward to supporting the Abalos leadership team as they continue on the journey of developing a pipeline of candidates that could greatly improve the immune system’s ability to identify hard-to-treat tumors and elicit a long-term anti-tumor immune response," added Isabelle de Cremoux, CEO and Managing Partner at Seventure.

Abalos was launched in October 2019 to advance a technology platform that harnesses the unique features of the lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), which specifically targets tumor cells. Through its proprietary Fast Evolution Platform, Abalos is generating variants with optimized anti-tumoral properties to trigger a highly precise and directed immune response that can be utilized for distant metastases and enable long-term disease control.

In conjunction with the closing of the Series A financing round extension, Annegret de Baey from Seventure Partners and Sebastian Pünzeler from Coparion will join Abalos’ Supervisory Board.

On October 14, 2021 Anticancer Bioscience (ACB), pioneers in synthetic lethal approaches to precision oncology, reported that it had secured an additional CNY 68.4 million (~USD 10.6 million) from new Chinese investors (Press release, Anticancer Bioscience, OCT 14, 2021, View Source [SID1234591246]). The seed extension financing was led by Three Rivers Capital, who joins existing private Chinese investors. The total raised in the seed round is now over USD31 million (around CNY 200 million).

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The proceeds will be mainly used to accelerate the preclinical development of the company’s two most advanced programs, MYC-synthetic lethal and contact inhibition restoration. The funds will also be used to optimize lead compounds for polyploidy-synthetic lethal therapy and to identify additional lead compounds for the company’s contact inhibition restoration approach to combatting cancer.

ACB is applying synthetic lethal approaches to develop targeted cancer therapies. These have the potential to be much safer and more effective than current therapies. ACB has access to world-leading cancer biology expertise and drug discovery platforms that enable the company to identify novel compounds that can target both genetic and epigenetic vulnerabilities of cancer cells. ACB has bespoke chemical compound libraries and has invested in developing one of the world’s largest natural product libraries, providing a rich screening resource for potential cancer therapeutics.

Commenting on the financing, Dun Yang PhD, Founder, President, and CEO of ACB said, "This successful financing round is a further strong endorsement of our innovative approach to identifying first-in-class and best-in-class therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, using synthetic lethal strategies. It underlines our progress over the past months and will help accelerate our five drug discovery programs through optimization to candidate selection and IND enabling studies. We aim to initiate two clinical trials in 2022."

Xiaoyin Chen, Investment Director at Three Rivers Capital said: "ACB is an emerging innovative biotech with global competitiveness. We firmly believe that only revolutionary innovations in drug discovery and development can generate great clinical benefits and value. ACB utilizes its unique small molecule libraries and screening approaches, combined with its multiple proprietary platform technology based on synthetic lethality, to develop broad-spectrum anti-cancer drugs and strives to become the pioneer in developing novel and next-generation cancer therapies."

ACB will be presenting its innovative drug discovery platforms and pipeline at the LSX Inv€$tival Showcase in November.