On September 8, 2022 Lunaphore, a Swiss life sciences company developing technology to enable spatial biology in every laboratory, and Nucleai, a leader in AI-powered spatial biology transforming precision medicine by unlocking the power of pathology data, reported a collaboration to accelerate the discovery of novel biomarkers and drug targets using the latest spatial imaging and machine learning technologies (Press release, Lunaphore Technologies, SEP 8, 2022, View Source [SID1234619284]).

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"We are thrilled to announce the partnership with Lunaphore and combine Lunaphore’s best-in-class flagship COMET, a hyperplex staining and imaging platform, with Nucleai’s ATOM platform that uniquely supports multiplex, IHC, and H&E data," said Avi Veidman, Chief Executive Officer of Nucleai. "This strategic partnership will allow us to utilize multiplex technology and provide a complete, actionable, and scalable solution to improve drug target discovery and development of our pharma and biotech partners."

Mapping biological microenvironments with spatial mapping technology is an exciting area of discovery. Lunaphore’s novel COMET technology unlocks the power of immunofluorescence spatial biology with a robust and user-friendly system, permitting the use of any non-conjugated antibodies and enabling the wide adoption of spatial biology in laboratories. Nucleai has built a platform that makes spatial analysis scalable and operational, enabling the next generation of actionable insights from massive pathology data sets that have not been analyzed to their fullest potential and could provide significant value to pharmaceutical companies and diagnostic labs.

The partnership will utilize Lunaphore’s innovative COMET platform for hyperplex staining and imaging with Nucleai’s cutting-edge AI spatial models to derive new insights from tissue biopsies, including novel drug targets, mechanisms of action, and biomarkers to advance the field of precision medicine. The combined solutions will provide laboratories with an integrated end-to-end spatial biology workflow from automated, hyperplex sequential immunofluorescence staining and imaging to AI-enabled, state-of-the-art image processing, and data analytics. As part of the partnership, the companies also plan to develop predictive and prognostic spatial biomarker assays.

"Our partnership with Nucleai is based on our shared vision to advance next-generation spatial multiplex immunofluorescence imaging to accelerate drug and biomarker discovery and development," said Déborah Heintze, Chief Marketing Officer of Lunaphore. "Connecting Nucleai’s solution with COMET, we have the potential to more precisely characterize the immune system and disease microenvironment to provide deeper biological insights to drug developers."

"Nucleai brings innovative spatial biology and machine learning platform (ATOM) to empower researchers with novel insights into drug discovery," said Mridula Iyer, Ph.D., Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Nucleai. "The technology is designed to unlock and analyze valuable data from pathology slides previously inaccessible, leading to the development of new precise targeted therapy that is important for patient outcomes. This collaboration is another example of how both Lunaphore and Nucleai are accelerating efforts to partner with pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies, as well as medical research institutions and other biomedical organizations."

About COMET

COMET is a fully automated sequential immunofluorescence (seqIF) instrument, able to perform hyperplex staining and imaging, producing high-quality data in a robust and reproducible manner. With superior tissue profiling capabilities, the system allows multiplex analysis of up to 40 different spatial markers per tissue slide without human intervention. COMET has a wide range of research applications, allowing for a dramatic improvement in the understanding of disease pathology in areas such as immuno-oncology, neuroscience, and infectious diseases. The technology has the ability to revolutionize clinical applications such as drug discovery and biomarker development. To learn more about the COMET platform, please visit: View Source

On September 8, 2022 The Board of Directors of Sanford Burnham Prebys reported the appointment of David Brenner, M.D., as the Institute’s next president and chief executive officer (Press release, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, SEP 8, 2022, View Source [SID1234619283]). Brenner joins Sanford Burnham Prebys following more than 15 years as vice chancellor for Health Sciences at UC San Diego. He will assume his new role effective September 14.

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"Our Board is thrilled to introduce a leader of David’s caliber," says James C. Blair, chairman of Sanford Burnham Prebys’ Board of Trustees. "David is a highly respected physician-scientist with tremendous administrative and fundraising experience. He is the ideal candidate to grow the Institute into an even greater, more successful scientific enterprise dedicated to research that can improve human health."

At UC San Diego, Brenner guided the nearly $2 billion expansion of health sciences that included the opening of the Jacobs Medical Center and the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute, where scientists try to speed research discoveries into new drugs and therapies. He also led the development of the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, centered on justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in its approach to public health research, education and service.

"I could not be more grateful to accept the position of president/CEO at this world-class biomedical research institute," says Brenner. "My roots are in biomedical research, and it’s an honor to be selected to lead Sanford Burnham Prebys’ extremely talented, innovative researchers."

Brenner is a leader in the field of liver research and is widely respected for his work advancing laboratory discoveries to the clinic setting. At Sanford Burnham Prebys, he will continue his research on fibrotic liver disease and liver cancer, using this as the foundation for preventing and treating liver disease. Brenner is a former editor-in-chief of Gastroenterology, the premier journal in the field.

"I’ve known about Sanford Burnham Prebys for many years—it has so much to offer. The culture of encouraging scientists to pursue opportunities and collaborating with institutions in San Diego and beyond leads to breakthrough research and makes it possible to achieve incredible goals," adds Brenner.

Brenner has been instrumental in starting several multidisciplinary efforts in San Diego, including the Institute for Engineering in Medicine, the Institute for Genomic Medicine, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, the UC San Diego Sanford Clinical Stem Cell Program, and the C3 Cancer Center Consortium (comprising UC San Diego, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Sanford Burnham Prebys).

Brenner earned his M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine. He was chief of Gastroenterology at the University of North Carolina and Chair of Medicine at Columbia University, before joining UC San Diego in 2007. His professional memberships include the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians (of which he is a past president), and an NIH National Council. At UC San Diego, he led the unprecedented expansion of the medical school. He has also served as a Pew Scholar and as a Clinical Investigator in the Veteran Affairs system.

Brenner succeeds Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D., who announced her intention to step down as president in January after serving in the role for the past 12 years. Vuori will continue as professor at the Sanford Burnham Prebys NCI-designated Cancer Center. Brenner is assuming the role of CEO from C. Randal Mills, Ph.D., who left the Institute earlier this year.

On September 8, 2022 TumorGen Inc., and PhenoVista Biosciences LLC reported that they have successfully isolated and characterized metastatic cancer cell clusters (MCCCs) from the blood of lung cancer patients’, validating TumorGen’s novel MCCC capture technology (Press release, TumorGen, SEP 8, 2022, View Source [SID1234619282]). This achievement is a critical milestone in developing anti-metastatic drugs, called "cluster busters," which will target these cells and prevent cancer metastasis.

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"Anti-metastatic therapies that can stop tumors from forming in other organs is a tremendous unmet medical need," said TumorGen Founder / President, Jeffrey K. Allen, Ph.D. "Our platform can identify where MCCCs are vulnerable so researchers can develop drugs targeting these deadly clusters. TumorGen will partner with oncology drug development companies to bring these new therapies to the clinic."

Metastasis causes around 90% of cancer deaths. While scientists have long known that MCCCs drive metastasis, no one has efficiently collected them from patient blood. This study, supported by the National Cancer Institute shows that MCCCs can be readily captured, allowing for genomic and other analyses to identify their vulnerabilities and enable new therapies.

"Utilizing our high-content imaging expertise in conjunction with TumorGen’s platform, we consistently detected a number of metastatic clusters from several lung cancer patients," said James Evans, Ph.D., CEO of PhenoVista Biosciences. "These MCCCs from cancer patients contain both cancer and non-cancer cells. We are excited to enable cancer researchers to work with these rare and, up to now, inaccessible patient samples."

On a research and discovery level, the ability to characterize MCCCs from circulating blood will help illuminate how human cells form distant metastases. The technology showed tremendous sensitivity and specificity, surpassing previous efforts to collect and characterize MCCCs. These developments offer new hope for newly diagnosed cancer patients.

"Working with and treating cancer patients every day, I always encounter the need for new drugs that can benefit my patients," said Sandip Patel, M.D., Associate Professor and Co-Leader of Experimental Therapeutics at UCSD Moores Cancer Center. "Soon, I hope to see treatment plans that focus on both the primary tumor and the prevention of distant metastases. We need this comprehensive approach to significantly improve patient outcomes."

On September 8, 2022 Selexis SA, a JSR Life Sciences company, and NexImmune Inc. (Nasdaq: NEXI), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing unique approaches to T cell immunotherapies, reported that they have signed a service agreement to develop cell lines targeting rare cancers and autoimmune diseases and to advance two HLAs that can be used to expand treatments to more patients (Press release, Selexis, SEP 8, 2022, View Source [SID1234619281]). Per the agreement, NexImmune will leverage Selexis’ SUREtechnology Platform, a suite of cell line development technologies that significantly reduce the time, effort, and costs associated with developing high-performance mammalian cell lines.

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The Selexis-generated cell lines will be used to manufacture HLA IgG4 fusion proteins and T cell co-stimulatory monoclonal antibodies that will be incorporated into NexImmune’s proprietary AIM injectable nanoparticle modality. These nanoparticles are designed to be an off-the-shelf injectable modality to engage a patient’s own T cells to identify and kill a variety of diseased cells within the body.

"We are pleased to support NexImmune’s exciting programs. Its innovative T cell modulating nanotechnology has the potential to create therapies that provide better outcomes for patients suffering from rare forms of cancer and autoimmune diseases," said Mark W. Womack, Chief Executive Officer of Selexis and KBI Biopharma. "We are excited to continue our longstanding relationship with NexImmune and are proud to be its cell line development provider of choice. We look forward to helping advance their novel immunotherapies to the clinic."

NexImmune’s off-the-shelf AIM injectable nanoparticles, decorated with antigen-specific peptides and co-stimulatory molecules, have the ability to engage antigen-specific T cell populations at multiple sites in the body and specifically stimulate or tolerize them to address a range of diseases, including cancers and autoimmune disorders for which there are currently no effective cellular therapies available.

"We are thrilled to have a partner in Selexis, as an industry-leading cell line development provider," said NexImmune Chief Scientific Officer, Mathias Oelke. "Our long-established working relationship made the decision to partner with them again an easy choice. We look forward to working together as we develop biologics that have the potential to make a real difference in patients’ lives."

On September 8, 2022 Calidi Biotherapeutics, Inc. (Calidi), a clinical-stage biotechnology company that is pioneering allogeneic cell-based platforms to revolutionize oncolytic virus therapies, reported that senior management will present a company overview at two upcoming investor conferences (Press release, Calidi Biotherapeutics, SEP 8, 2022, View Source [SID1234619279]):

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SALT New York 2022 on Monday, September 12, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. PT / 10:00 a.m ET; and
Baird 2022 Global Healthcare Conference on Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at 11:35 a.m. PT / 2:35 p.m. ET.