On June 28, 2022 Labcorp (NYSE: LH), a leading global life sciences company, reported that it is enhancing its central laboratory presence and drug development capabilities in Japan through an expansion of CB Trial Laboratory, the central laboratory co-managed by Labcorp Drug Development and BML, a leading Japanese provider of clinical laboratory testing services (Press release, LabCorp, JUN 28, 2022, View Source [SID1234616327]).

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Extending their strategic relationship that dates back more than a decade, Labcorp Drug Development and BML will begin work on a new laboratory facility in the city of Kawagoe, Saitama, expanding capacity and services for pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients. This will bolster Labcorp Drug Development’s central laboratory services offerings in Japan and sets the stage for a continued acceleration of companion diagnostic capabilities.

"Labcorp Drug Development remains committed to growing its Japanese operations and services through continued expansion and partnerships," said Honggang Bi, senior vice president and head of Asia-Pacific for Labcorp Drug Development. "Broadening our work with BML and increasing our laboratory footprint means we will be able to offer shorter turnaround times, superior in-country sample management and full lab testing services for global clinical trials in Japan. This will benefit patients, clients and health care providers by providing them with the information needed to make key decisions."

The new facility will be located near BML’s General Laboratory in Kawagoe where the current CB Trial Laboratory is located, providing over 4,000 square meters of dedicated space for global clinical trials managed by Labcorp Drug Development. The new space will be greater than five times the size of the current facility, with additional capabilities such as genomics, microbiology and companion diagnostics in addition to expanded offerings in current lab capabilities including flow cytometry, immunology, and anatomical pathology and histology. Completion of the expanded laboratory is expected by early 2025.

Through the planned laboratory expansion, Labcorp will advance biomarker and esoteric testing services, expand its companion diagnostics portfolio and deepen the integration with its clinical development services. In addition, the company will be able to intensify its focus on cell and gene therapy research and development, part of a broader commitment to precision medicine and fortifying the company’s position as an oncology leader.

"In collaborating with Labcorp, we are able to offer our pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients access to both comprehensive clinical laboratory testing and drug development opportunities," said Dr. Kensuke Kondo, president of BML. "The laboratory expansion provides additional capabilities and capacity and opens the door to enriched services, more resources and better outcomes for our clients and patients."

Labcorp and BML have successfully provided central laboratory services for global clinical trials in Japan since 2010 through kit production, sample logistics and laboratory operations at CB Trial Laboratory. Their partnership agreement was renewed in 2020.

On June 28, 2022 Immunomic Therapeutics reported that Organized around the theme "next-generation vaccines treatment and diagnostics that save lives", Vaccines Summit-2022 is comprised of various sessions designed to offer comprehensive symposiums that address current issues in the field of vaccine research and provides fantastic opportunity to network with your peers from academia and industry (Press release, Immunomic Therapeutics, JUN 28, 2022, View Source [SID1234616325]).

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Vaccines Summit-2022 delivers unlimited opportunities for making business deals, product enhancements, cutting edge solutions for improving and elevating the company’s business and partnership. The conference provides a unique platform for all the leading industry professionals, institutional investors, capitalists, corporate investors and business development executives to have private One-to-One meetings with elite business representatives which increases the chances of marketing in this networking world.

On June 28, 2022 Iktos, a company specialized in Artificial Intelligence for new drug design, reported a collaboration with Galapagos, a leading global biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative medicines, to apply Iktos’s generative modelling artificial intelligence (AI) technology in one of Galapagos drug discovery programs (Press release, Iktos, JUN 28, 2022, View Source [SID1234616324]). Under the agreement, Iktos will apply its de novo ligand and structure-based generative modelling technologies and software Makya, its AI-based retrosynthesis analysis and planning tool Spaya, and its know-how in computational drug design to expedite the identification of potential pre-clinical candidates and to identify additional novel chemical matter with suitable properties. Galapagos scientists will benefit from direct access to Makya and Spaya as part of the collaboration.

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Iktos’s AI technology, based on deep generative models, helps to bring new insights and directions into the drug discovery process based on a comprehensive data-driven chemical structure generation technology. This technology automatically designs virtual novel molecules with all of the characteristics of a successful drug molecule. This approach, validated through multiple collaborations, is a novel solution to one of the key challenges in drug design: rapid identification of molecules that simultaneously satisfy multiple parameters, such as potency, selectivity, safety, and project-specific properties. This approach uniquely enables the exploration of chemical space and produces innovative molecule designs with greater freedom to operate. Iktos has also diversified its R&D efforts into the development of an AI technology for retrosynthesis and has developed the AI-based retrosynthesis analysis and planning tool Spaya enabling systematic exploration and prioritisation of synthetic routes for a desired compound in minutes.

"We are thrilled and proud to join forces with Galapagos with the aim to discover optimised lead compounds for one of Galapagos undisclosed small molecule drug discovery projects" commented Yann Gaston-Mathé, President and CEO of Iktos. "Pleased to have earned Galapagos trust, we are confident that together with Galapagos established R&D team, we will be able to identify promising novel chemical matter and solve complex multiparametric optimisation problems. The insights and feedback from Galapagos research team will be highly valuable to guide us into improving our technology and products."

On June 28, 2022 Fate Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: FATE), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of programmed cellular immunotherapies for patients with cancer, reported that it has expanded its off-the-shelf, iPSC-derived, cell-based cancer immunotherapy collaboration with ONO Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (ONO) to include the development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) NK cell collaboration candidates (Press release, Fate Therapeutics, JUN 28, 2022, View Source [SID1234616321]). In addition, as part of the collaboration’s expansion, ONO will contribute novel binding domains targeting a second solid tumor antigen. Under the original Collaboration and Option Agreement entered into between Fate and ONO in September 2018, ONO has contributed novel binding domains targeting an initial solid tumor antigen, and Fate is currently conducting preclinical development of a multiplexed-engineered, iPSC-derived CAR T-cell product candidate for solid tumors.

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"Our collaboration with ONO has focused on driving innovation in the field of cell therapy for solid tumors, and we are excited by the preclinical data we have observed with our first iPSC-derived CAR T-cell product candidate," said Scott Wolchko, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fate Therapeutics. "We are impressed with the differentiated antigen binders that ONO has contributed to the partnership, and we are pleased to expand our collaboration to initiate preclinical development of collaboration products targeting a second solid tumor antigen."

Under the terms of the amended Collaboration and Option Agreement, Fate will advance iPSC-derived CAR NK and CAR T-cell product candidates to a pre-defined preclinical milestone, at which point ONO has an option to assume responsibility for worldwide development and commercialization with Fate retaining the right to jointly develop and commercialize in the United States and Europe. Fate retains all rights of manufacture of collaboration products on a global basis.

"The first multiplexed-engineered, iPSC-derived CAR T-cell product candidate under our collaboration with Fate Therapeutics incorporates multiple mechanisms of action designed to specifically address solid tumors and is successfully advancing toward clinical development," said Toichi Takino, Senior Executive Officer / Executive Director, Discovery & Research of ONO. "Based on the collaboration progress and Fate’s proven ability to develop innovative product candidates, we are excited to expand our collaboration to include a second solid tumor target and to continue our work with Fate in developing first-in-class, off-the-shelf CAR NK and CAR T-cell therapies for cancer patients."

Fate will continue to receive committed research funding from ONO during the preclinical option period, and is eligible to receive a preclinical option exercise fee as well as clinical, regulatory and commercialization milestone payments from ONO in connection with the development and commercialization of each product candidate. In addition, Fate is eligible to receive tiered royalties on net sales by ONO of each product candidate in the ONO territory.

About Fate Therapeutics’ iPSC Product Platform
The Company’s proprietary induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) product platform enables mass production of off-the-shelf, engineered, homogeneous cell products that are designed to be administered with multiple doses to deliver more effective pharmacologic activity, including in combination with other cancer treatments. Human iPSCs possess the unique dual properties of unlimited self-renewal and differentiation potential into all cell types of the body. The Company’s first-of-kind approach involves engineering human iPSCs in a one-time genetic modification event and selecting a single engineered iPSC for maintenance as a clonal master iPSC line. Analogous to master cell lines used to manufacture biopharmaceutical drug products such as monoclonal antibodies, clonal master iPSC lines are a renewable source for manufacturing cell therapy products which are well-defined and uniform in composition, can be mass produced at significant scale in a cost-effective manner, and can be delivered off-the-shelf for patient treatment. As a result, the Company’s platform is uniquely designed to overcome numerous limitations associated with the production of cell therapies using patient- or donor-sourced cells, which is logistically complex and expensive and is subject to batch-to-batch and cell-to-cell variability that can affect clinical safety and efficacy. Fate Therapeutics’ iPSC product platform is supported by an intellectual property portfolio of over 350 issued patents and 150 pending patent applications.

On June 28, 2022 Palleon Pharmaceuticals Inc., a company pioneering the field of glyco-immunology to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases, reported a strategic collaboration with Shanghai Henlius Biotech, Inc. (2696.HK) to develop and commercialize two bifunctional sialidase programs from Palleon’s EAGLE (Enzyme-Antibody Glyco-Ligand Editing) immuno-oncology platform, including Palleon’s Bifunctional HER2-Sialidase now in preclinical development and a second bifunctional sialidase to be developed with a proprietary target provided by Henlius (Press release, Palleon Pharmaceuticals, JUN 28, 2022, View Source [SID1234616320]).

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Palleon’s EAGLE platform potentiates antitumor immunity by enzymatically removing immunosuppressive sialic acids from tumor and immune cell surfaces. The EAGLE platform is created by genetic fusion of an engineered human sialidase with antibody domains, and includes clinical stage Bi-Sialidase, as well as various bifunctional sialidases comprising a sialidase together with a targeting arm. As one of Palleon’s most advanced bifunctional sialidases, the Bifunctional HER2-Sialidase has shown the potential to treat both HER2-low and HER2-high expressing tumors with modest to high levels of tumor surface sialoglycans, and the candidate is on the verge of entering IND-enabling studies.

Henlius has built a vertically integrated biopharmaceutical platform with core capabilities of high efficiency and innovation embedded throughout the entire product life cycle of R&D, manufacturing, and commercialization, expediting a diversified and robust pipeline covering tumor-associated-antigen (TAA) targets with high market potential. Fully leveraging its experience in biologics development and harnessing the power of innovation, Henlius implements its proprietary antibody and novel conjugating technologies to explore various forms of antibody conjugates to continue building a more diverse innovative pipeline by synergizing its innovation centers in China and the US, as well as its global clinical development teams. Henlius has process development capabilities that span the product lifecycle, starting with cell line development and continuing through commercial manufacturing, effectively supporting the commercialization of its products around the world.

"We’re very pleased to partner with Henlius to develop and expand Palleon’s pipeline to realize the potential of bifunctional sialidases as a treatment option for a wide range of cancer types," said Jim Broderick, M.D., Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Palleon. "Henlius has a strong track record of providing groundbreaking and cost-effective medicines for patients in China, and the development of these two therapeutic candidates will benefit from their expertise and capabilities."

Under the terms of the agreement, Palleon will perform research and the parties will then share preclinical and global clinical development responsibilities and costs for the Bifunctional HER2-Sialidase and a second bifunctional sialidase. Henlius has an exclusive license to the two investigational therapies in China (including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), while Palleon retains all other global rights and, for the second product, receives a royalty-bearing exclusive license to Henlius’ antibody technology outside China. Palleon received an upfront payment and is further eligible to receive up to $196.5 million in certain predetermined R&D and commercial milestones, in addition to royalties upon Henlius commercialization in China.

"We strive to offer innovative and affordable biologics to all patients," said Wenjie Zhang, Chairman, Executive Director, and CEO of Henlius. "Henlius is currently exploring various forms of antibody conjugates utilizing our proprietary antibody expertise and novel conjugating technologies. Together with Palleon’s cutting-edge EAGLE immuno-oncology platform, we believe that this collaboration will complement Henlius’ innovative early-stage pipeline and accelerate our progress of providing breakthrough treatments for patients with unmet medical needs."