On February 3, 2022 LISCure Biosciences ("LISCure") reported that it had reached an agreement with The Scripps Research Institute ("Scripps Research") to collaboratively research on bacteria-mediated immuno-oncology candidates against multiple cancer types (Press release, LISCure Biosciences, FEB 3, 2022, View Source [SID1234607722]).

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Scripps Research is the top nonprofit scientific institute in the US for producing high-quality research based on discoveries published in leading scientific journals, having discovered ten new drugs approved benefiting millions of people worldwide.

Howard C. Hang, Ph.D., a world-renowned scientist in the area of microbial immunotherapy, will lead a joint research collaboration. He has published a number of papers in journals such as Science, Science Immunology, eLife and Nature Chemical Biology in this area of research. In particular, he is broadly interested in the molecular mechanisms related to the modulations of immunity by chemical signals derived from specific metabolites or microbiota.

With this collaboration, LISCure and Scripps Research scientists will jointly discover novel mechanisms of LB-P2D involved in its multifaceted antitumor immune signals and research on the combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

LB-P2D, a nonpathogenic bacteria-based immune-oncology candidate, has shown promising antitumor efficacy in various tumor-bearing animal models. It achieved complete remission in all treatment group subjects at an effective dose, showed robust tumor suppression in recurrent and metastatic tumor models, and confirmed its dose-dependency.

"The antitumor efficacies of LB-P2D have been verified in various tumor-bearing animal models. We are excited to collaborate with Scripps Research to find the unique characteristics of LB-P2D by discovering differentiated mechanisms of LB-P2D," said LISCure immuno-oncology research team.

"LISCure has discovered and cultivated a remarkable collection of bacterial species/strains with fascinating therapeutic properties. Given our experience with microbiota mechanisms of action, we are pleased to collaborate with LISCure to dissect and understand the physiological pathways that are modulated by LB-P2D and other uniquely active bacteria," said Hang.

LISCure plans to enter the first-in-human study in the US for LB-P2D in 2H 2022.

On February 3, 2022 Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) reported that its executives will be speaking at the following investor conferences (Press release, Illumina, FEB 3, 2022, View Source [SID1234607721]):

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SVB Leerink 2022 Global Healthcare Conference on February 17, 2022
Fireside Chat at 9:00am Pacific Time (12:00pm Eastern Time)
Citi 2022 Healthcare Conference on February 24, 2022
Fireside Chat at 9:30am Pacific Time (12:30pm Eastern Time)
The live webcasts can be accessed under the Investor Info section of the "company" tab at www.illumina.com. A replay will be posted on Illumina’s website after the event and will be available for at least 30 days following.

On February 3, 2022 Sapience Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of peptide therapeutics to address difficult-to-treat cancers, reported that the company will present at the Guggenheim Healthcare Talks, 2022 Oncology Conference, taking place virtually February 9-February 11, 2022 (Press release, Sapience Therapeutics, FEB 3, 2022, View Source [SID1234607720]).

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Dr. Barry Kappel, CEO and President of Sapience, will present a company overview on Friday February 11th, at 11:30 am ET. Sapience management will also participate in one-on-one meetings with investors during the conference.

On February 3, 2022 Synthekine Inc., an engineered cytokine therapeutics company, reported the dosing of the first patient in a Phase 1a/1b clinical trial of its IL-2 partial agonist, STK-012, for the treatment of solid tumors. STK-012 is designed as an alpha/beta-biased IL-2 partial agonist to selectively stimulate antigen-activated T cells, which are associated with potent anti-tumor activity, and avoid stimulation of toxicity causing immune cells, such as natural killer cells (Press release, Synthekine, FEB 3, 2022, View Source [SID1234607716]).

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"We are proud to begin this year with the important milestone of dosing the first patient in our Phase 1 trial of STK-012," said Debanjan Ray, chief executive officer of Synthekine. "STK-012 is a highly differentiated IL-2 partial agonist tuned to expand the therapeutic index of IL-2 by biasing towards efficacy driving antigen-activated T cells and away from toxicity causing lymphocytes, such as natural killer (NK) cells. STK-012 is the first program from our broad portfolio of biased cytokines to enter the clinic, and its rapid progress into clinical investigation further highlights our team’s tremendous ability to execute efficiently and move our pipeline forward."

Aldesleukin (recombinant IL-2) has shown to be active in certain cancers, but its use is limited due to life threatening toxicities such as capillary leak syndrome (CLS). Synthekine presented preclinical data at AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) 2021 demonstrating a mouse surrogate of STK-012 achieved superior tumor regression compared to both wild-type mouse IL-2 and a non-alpha-IL-2 agent, representing a different approach to biasing IL-2. In toxicity models, the mouse surrogate of STK-012, unlike these same comparators, was well tolerated and did not induce CLS. In non-human primate studies, STK-012 avoided lymphopenia, NK cell activation and CLS induction, which was observed with both aldesleukin and a non-alpha-IL-2 agent.

The Phase 1a/1b clinical trial is an open-label, multi-center study enrolling patients with advanced solid tumors. The dose escalation portion of the study will evaluate STK-012 both as a monotherapy and in combination with pembrolizumab. Following completion of the dose escalation, Synthekine will initiate expansion cohorts with STK-012. For additional information about the trial, please visit www.clinicaltrials.gov using the identifier NCT05098132.

On February 3, 2022 Sierra Oncology, Inc. (Nasdaq: SRRA), a late-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to delivering targeted therapies for rare cancers, reported that the underwriters of its previously announced underwritten public offering exercised in full their option to purchase 750,000 additional shares of common stock at a price of $27.00 per share, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions (Press release, Sierra Oncology, FEB 3, 2022, View Source [SID1234607719]). With this exercise, the aggregate gross proceeds to Sierra Oncology from the offering were approximately $155.3 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses. The offering of the additional 750,000 shares closed on February 3, 2022. Sierra Oncology intends to use the net proceeds of the offering to prepare for potential commercialization of momelotinib, clinical development of its other product candidates, research, clinical and process development and manufacturing of its product candidates, working capital, and capital expenditures and other general corporate purposes.

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Jefferies and Cantor acted as the joint book-running managers and representatives of the underwriters for the offering. LifeSci Capital, Oppenheimer & Co. and H.C. Wainwright & Co. acted as lead managers for the offering.

A shelf registration statement on Form S-3 relating to the securities offered in the public offering described above was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 5, 2021 and declared effective by the SEC on November 12, 2021. A final prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus relating to the offering have been filed with the SEC and are available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Copies of the final prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus may also be obtained by contacting Jefferies LLC, Attention: Equity Syndicate Prospectus Department, 520 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10022, by telephone at (877) 821-7388, or by email at [email protected]; or Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Attention: Capital Markets, 499 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10022, or by e-mail at [email protected].

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities being offered, nor shall there be any sale of the securities being offered in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction.