On March 8, 2022 NEC OncoImmunity (NOI), a subsidiary of NEC Corporation (NEC), and VAXIMM AG, a Swiss/German biotech company focused on developing an oral plug and play DNA vaccination technology to stimulate patients’ cytotoxic T-cells targeting a wide range of cancer-related antigens, reported that the companies have signed an agreement under which NOI will acquire all of VAXIMM’s neoantigen program assets (Press release, NEC, MAR 8, 2022, View Source [SID1234609621]).

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Under the agreement, NOI will acquire VAXIMM’s neoantigen vaccine-related patents, license the requisite manufacturing patents, and will take over several existing contracts with key collaborators and partners. Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. In 2019, the companies entered into a strategic clinical trial collaboration agreement and an equity investment agreement to develop novel personalized neoantigen cancer vaccines. VAXIMM retains rights to its first-in-class oral T-cell activation platform technology and all other product candidates, including VXM01, which is being developed for the treatment of glioblastoma.

Commenting on the announcement, Richard Stratford, CEO of NOI, said, "We believe this is a transformative transaction for NOI/NEC. With it, NOI/NEC has acquired the rights to an attractive delivery platform with broad therapeutic potential in oncology and other areas. Following this acquisition, we expect to initiate the first clinical study delivering personalized neoantigens during 2022, which is an important milestone. Our unique artificial intelligence (AI) technology is focused on several attractive areas of unmet medical need with major market potential, and we now have the components in place to fully realize this significant commercial opportunity."

Thomas D. Szucs, MD, Chairman of the Board of VAXIMM, said, "I am excited to see the progress that has been made in advancing our neoantigen program, already with the strong support of NEC as partner and investor. I congratulate the VAXIMM team, under Dr. Lubenau’s leadership, for bringing this important project to clinical testing stage. We are delighted that the NOI team will now take this program forward into the clinic with the goal of bringing a novel therapy to patients in desperate need of more treatment options."

Dr. Heinz Lubenau, CEO and Co-founder of VAXIMM, said, "We believe that NEC OncoImmunity is the ideal company to take VAXIMM’s novel neoantigen programs through development and hopefully to the market to help patients. The first project from our earlier collaboration utilizing NEC’s AI platform has received clinical trial approval in Europe, and we are excited that NEC will be putting its resources behind this and future neoantigen vaccine programs derived from VAXIMM’s novel technology."

Motoo Nishihara, Executive Vice President, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and Member of the Board, NEC Corporation, said, "Cancer and infectious diseases are two of the most serious healthcare challenges, with millions of new cases diagnosed worldwide annually. NEC’s core AI technology is well positioned for the development of personalized medicines, and we are strongly committed to delivering effective treatments for cancer patients and infectious diseases. We are confident that this acquisition of assets from VAXIMM will enable us to further develop our AI-optimized and personalized therapies to benefit the health of individual patients worldwide."

The transaction expands NEC’s neoantigen drug development pipeline by broadening its focus into several compelling therapeutic areas with high unmet medical need. VAXIMM’s plug and play DNA vaccination technology is based on a live attenuated, safe, orally available bacterial vaccine strain, which is modified to stimulate patients’ cytotoxic T-cells to target a wide range of cancer-related antigens. The platform allows for fast and scalable manufacturing of personalized T-cell cancer vaccines and may overcome key challenges faced by many other approaches.

On March 7, 2022 GluBio Pharmaceutical reported its completion of nearly US$50 million Series A financing (Press release, GluBio Therapeutics, MAR 7, 2022, View Source;page=ContentPage&contentid=513 [SID1234638031]). As the existing shareholder, Legend Capital continued to support GluBio’s innovation and development by joining this round of financing. The fund will be used for tapping pipeline candidates, platform upgradation, and talent acquisition. Previously, GluBio has raised US$20 million in angel round financing, bringing the total capital raised to nearly US$70 million.

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Founded in March 2021, GluBio is a startup company focused on the discovery and development of new-generation molecular glue degraders targeting disease-driving proteins that were previously considered "undruggable". At present, GluBio has established a multi-dimensional protein degradation screening platform, innovative target validation platform, molecular glue rational design platform, and proprietary high-activity molecular library.

"GluBio is committed to developing first-in-class novel molecular glue drugs to meet the clinical needs and promote medical innovation. We firmly believe that protein degradation technology has the potential to bring revolutionary drugs to patients around the world, and it is expected to lead the R&D direction of small molecule drugs in the next two decades. We are honored to be favored and supported by many well-known investment institutions and investors, and look forward to working with the team to build an industry-leading protein degradation drug discovery platform. We shall accelerate the introduction of a variety of molecular glue drugs to meet the clinical demand, benefiting more patients." Gang Lu, Ph.D., the Founder and CEO of GluBio, said.

Legend Capital has been firmly and systematically investing in the field of innovative drugs. Adhering to the investment philosophy of "Global vision, Chinese insight", Legend Capital is looking for teams with strong technical strength and international competitiveness to solve unmet clinical needs. Kawin Technology (688687.SH), Innovent Biologics (01801.HK) and Harbour BioMed (02142.HK) invested by Legend Capital have gone public, and there are more portfolio companies positioned as leading enterprises in sub-sectors, such as, GluBio, RecBio, Suzhou Ribo, Peg Bio, Exegenesis Bio, Lynk Pharmaceutical, Innostellar Biotherapeutics, etc.

On March 7, 2022 GlycoMantra, a University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) startup company developing therapeutics for unmet medical needs in prostate cancer, NASH liver fibrosis, and type 2 diabetes, reported that has been granted worldwide, exclusive rights to a UMB technology to advance the company’s pipeline of therapeutics for treating drug-resistant metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) (Press release, GlycoMantra, MAR 7, 2022, View Source [SID1234614714]).

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According to the American Society of Cancer Oncology, colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer death among men and women in the U.S., totaling about 53,000 deaths per year. Drug resistance to CRC is a primary challenge and mCRC remains a lethal disease. Although 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)—one of the current standards of care for patients with mCRC—exerts clinical benefit, all patients have acquired resistance to the drug over time.

To address drug resistance, GlycoMantra is developing a novel combination therapy, using two natural bioingredients that are expected to treat mCRC and 5-FU-resistant mCRC in multiple pathways: inhibition of the neoangiogenesis to reduce cancer stem cells (CSCs) and increasing apoptosis (cell death). Aditi Banerjee, PhD, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, is the lead inventor of the technology.

"The combination therapy we’re pursuing is anticipated to be a significant advancement in the arsenal against mCRC. By exerting multiple and prolonged attack on tumors, our goal would be to achieve longer survival of mCRC patients with use of this approach," said Hafiz Ahmed, PhD, Founder, President, and CEO of GlycoMantra. "This licensing agreement with the University of Maryland, Baltimore will allow us to advance our very important research and development."

So far, the efficacy of the combination drug has been demonstrated in a preclinical model. IND-enabling experiments such as toxicity and PK/PD are the next steps prior to beginning human clinical trials.

Phil Robilotto, DO, MBA, associate vice president of UMB’s Office of Technology Transfer and director of UM Ventures at Baltimore said, "We are thrilled to collaborate with Dr. Ahmed, an experienced scientist who has successfully implemented both short and long-term strategic R&D programs focused on cancer and metabolic disease. I’m excited to see what the future holds for his team and for patients."

On March 7, 2022 Arctoris, a tech-enabled biopharma company, and Evariste Technologies, an AI-drug discovery company, reported they have formed a joint venture to identify novel small molecule kinase inhibitors for treatment of patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) (Press release, Arctoris, MAR 7, 2022, View Source;utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=arctoris-and-evariste-technologies-form-a-joint-venture-to-identify-novel-small-molecule-cmet-inhibitors-for-non-small-cell-lung-cancer [SID1234612705]).

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Current treatment options for NSCLC are limited, especially in advanced stages. It has been shown that the proto-oncogene cMet is mutated or upregulated in approximately 5% of all NSCLC cases. While cMET has been successfully targeted by two recently approved drugs (Tepotinib, Capmatinib), rapid development of resistance has been reported and there is a clear need for improved second-generation cMET inhibitors to overcome resistance.

The two companies are combining their platforms for AI-guided and robotics-powered drug discovery to develop a set of novel kinase inhibitors against cMET. The partnership will bring together two highly synergistic approaches – quantitative decision making and state-of-the-art generative chemistry, combined with real-time biological and biochemical profiling and data generation, to significantly accelerate the design-make-test-analyze cycle. The two companies will also use their strong links to leading centres for NSCLC treatment to leverage clinical insights, inform their discovery and development efforts and directly address clinically relevant liabilities limiting the effectiveness of currently available therapies.

"We are really excited to be working with Arctoris on this project. There is a huge need for next generation cMET inhibitors for NSCLC. This is a cancer that affects millions globally, and we hope that we can bring meaningful benefit to some of these lives in the near future," shares Dr. Nicholas Firth, CEO of Evariste Technologies.

Arctoris CEO Martin-Immanuel Bittner MD DPhil FRSA commented on the joint venture, "Together with our partners at Evariste, we are developing novel treatment options in NSCLC against a fully validated target, where first generation inhibitors can be improved on in a clinically meaningful way. Combining patient-derived insights on resistance and toxicity patterns with AI-powered molecule design and our robotic platform, Ulysses, we aim to develop superior next generation inhibitors within a significantly accelerated time frame."

The collaboration between Arctoris and Evariste is already underway and has identified novel, active chemical matter. "We look forward to keeping our community updated about the progress we are making within the joint venture between Evariste Technologies and Arctoris. We have had an incredible start already, and we look forward to continuing our work to develop better treatments options for patients worldwide", shares Bittner.

On March 7, 2022 Oasmia Pharmaceutical’s CEO, Dr Francois Martelet reported that it will present at Aktiespararna’s Aktiedagen Stockholm on March 14, 2022 (Press release, Vivesto, MAR 7, 2022, View Source [SID1234611839]). The presentation starts at 11:00 CET and will be broadcast live as a webcast at: www.aktiespararna.se/tv/live.

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The presentation will be available online the following day on www.aktiespararna.se/tv/evenemang and on Oasmia Pharmaceutical’s website www.oasmia.com.