On December 19, 2023 Innate Pharma SA (Euronext Paris: IPH; Nasdaq: IPHA) and Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) reported that Sanofi has exercised its option to license a natural killer (NK) cell engager program in solid tumors from Innate’s ANKET (Antibody-based NK Cell Engager Therapeutics) platform pursuant to the terms of the research collaboration and license agreement signed in December 2022 (Press release, Innate Pharma, DEC 19, 2023, View Source [SID1234638707]). Following a research collaboration period, Sanofi will be responsible for all development, manufacturing and commercialization. Sanofi still retains the option to one additional ANKET target as per the license agreement.

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Eric Vivier, Ph.D., DVM, PhD, Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer of Innate Pharma, said: "We have been collaborating with Sanofi since 2016 and together we have made significant progress in advancing multi-specific NK Cell Engagers for the treatment of various cancers with two programs now in the clinic. Building on our partnership with Sanofi, the exercise of this option is another important milestone as we continue to grow our ANKET platform."

Under the terms of the December 2022 agreement, Innate will receive a €15m payment for the exercise of this option. Innate Pharma is eligible for up to €1.35bn total in preclinical, clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones plus royalties on potential net sales.

Valeria Fantin, Ph.D., Global Head of Oncology Research at Sanofi, states: "Sanofi is pleased with our collaboration with Innate and continues to be excited at the potential of investigational NK Cell Engagers. The emerging results we have seen show promise at the possibility of offering options to patients who have limited treatments available to them."

About ANKET

ANKET (Antibody-based NK cell Engager Therapeutics) is Innate’s proprietary platform for developing next-generation, multi-specific natural killer (NK) cell engagers to treat certain types of cancer.

This versatile, fit-for-purpose technology is creating an entirely new class of molecules to induce synthetic immunity against cancer.

About the Innate-Sanofi research collaboration and license agreements

The Company has a research collaboration and license agreement with Sanofi to apply Innate’s proprietary technology to the development of innovative multi-specific antibody formats engaging NK cells through the activating receptors NKp46 and CD16 to kill tumor cells.

Under the 2016 research collaboration and license agreement, Sanofi is responsible for the development, manufacturing and commercialization of products resulting from the research collaboration, IPH6101/SAR’579 (Trifunctional anti-CD123 NKp46xCD16 NK cell engager) and IPH6401/SAR’514 (Trifunctional anti-BCMA NKp46xCD16 NK cell engager). Innate Pharma is eligible to up to €400m in development and commercial milestone payments as well as royalties on net sales.

As part of the license agreement entered in December 2022, Sanofi licensed IPH62 (B7-H3) and one undisclosed ANKET programs and has the option for one additional target. Under the terms of the 2022 agreement, Innate Pharma is eligible to up to €1.35bn total in preclinical, clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones plus royalties on potential net sales.

On December 19, 2023 – Atavistik Bio, a biotechnology company discovering the next generation of precision allosteric therapeutics inspired by the body’s natural regulators, reported that it has raised an additional $40 million to advance its lead precision allosteric small molecule therapeutic in oncology into the clinic and to advance its earlier stage pipeline (Press release, Atavistik Bio, DEC 19, 2023, View Source [SID1234647393]). The financing included existing investors, including The Column Group, Lux Capital, and Nextech Invest, Ltd. Atavistik Bio has raised $100 million in aggregate since its launch in August 2021.

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"We’ve made tremendous progress identifying functional pockets of validated targets and have accelerated the development of precision allosteric therapeutics. Key to our success has been our outstanding team with the know-how and proven track record of discovering and developing transformative medicines," said Bryan Stuart, Chief Executive Officer at Atavistik Bio. "We’re grateful to our investors for their continued support of our mission. We look forward to using the proceeds from this raise to advance our lead program into the clinic and progress our additional programs and platform."

"Allostery continues to gain traction given its potential to modulate intractable targets and to offer better tolerated, more effective therapies for current sub-optimally treated diseases," said John Josey, Ph.D., Venture Partner at The Column Group and Atavistik Bio’s Board Chair. "In a short period of time, Atavistik Bio has quickly identified novel allosteric binding pockets in a broad range of targets and built a deep discovery pipeline. We believe that Atavistik Bio’s differentiated approach to identify chemical matter against challenging and valuable targets presents a compelling opportunity to bring important new, allosteric medicines to patients across a broad spectrum of disease areas."

Atavistik Bio seamlessly integrates its proprietary Atavistik Metabolite-Protein Screening (AMPS) technology with its AI-enabled discovery engine to rapidly advance programs from discovery into development. AMPS efficiently uncovers cryptic functional pockets not detectable with other techniques. It accomplishes this by leveraging metabolites, which are natural regulators of protein and RNA function in the body, as ‘bait’ to reveal otherwise hidden allosteric binding pockets on target proteins and functional sites on RNA. Atavistik Bio then applies its state-of-the-art, proprietary AI-enabled drug discovery engine to discover and design small molecules, enabling the rapid advancement of allosteric precision therapeutics.

Employing this integrated approach, Atavistik Bio has successfully and rapidly identified functional binding pockets for the development of small molecule therapeutics across a broad range of target classes, including kinases, enzymes, receptors, transcription factors, as well as protein complexes and RNA, and translated these insights into a robust discovery pipeline. The company’s internal efforts are focused on oncology and rare diseases. It intends to leverage partnerships to extend the reach of its platform to other therapeutic areas, including metabolic and cardiovascular disease, inflammation and immunology disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases.

On December 19, 2023 Harpoon Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: HARP), a clinical-stage immunotherapy company developing novel T cell engagers, reported abstract acceptance and an upcoming rapid oral presentation of updated interim monotherapy data from its Phase 1/2 clinical trial evaluating HPN328 in small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and other neuroendocrine tumor types at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) (Free ASCO Whitepaper) Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (ASCO-GU) being held in San Francisco, CA and virtually on January 25-27, 2024 (Press release, Harpoon Therapeutics, DEC 19, 2023, View Source [SID1234638691]). HPN328 targets delta-like ligand 3 (DLL3) and is derived from Harpoon’s proprietary Tri-specific T cell Activating Construct (TriTAC) platform designed to recruit a patient’s own immune cells to kill tumor cells.

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Details of the ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper)-GU presentation are as follows:

Title: "Interim Results from a Phase 1/2 Study of HPN328, a Tri-Specific, Half-Life (T1/2) Extended DLL3-targeting T-Cell Engager in Patients with Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer (NEPC) and other Neuroendocrine Neoplasms (NEN)"

Abstract number: 121

Session: Rapid Oral Abstract Session A: Prostate Cancer

Session track: Prostate Cancer – Advanced | Prostate Cancer – Localized

Session date & time: Thursday, January 25, 2024 at 4:15 PM – 5:00 PM PST

Presenter: Himisha Beltran, M.D. | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Location: Level 3, Ballroom | Livestream

The presentation will also be available on Harpoon’s website under Publications following the session.

For more details about the ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper)-GU Annual Meeting, please visit: View Source

About HPN328
HPN328 targets delta-like canonical Notch ligand 3 (DLL3) and is based on Harpoon’s proprietary Tri-specific T cell Activating Construct (TriTAC) platform designed to recruit a patient’s own immune cells to kill tumor cells. HPN328 is being evaluated as monotherapy in an ongoing open-label, multicenter, two-part study to assess the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics in patients with advanced cancers associated with the expression of DLL3.

In March 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Orphan Drug Designation to HPN328 for the treatment of SCLC.

On December 19, 2023 Owkin, a French-American biotechnology company that applies artificial intelligence (AI) to drug discovery, development, and diagnostics, reported that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with MSD, the trade name of Merck & Co Inc., Rahway NJ USA to develop and commercialize AI-powered digital pathology diagnostics for the EU market (Press release, Owkin, DEC 19, 2023, View Source [SID1234638708]).

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Clinical trials have shown that the MSI-H tumor phenotype has potential prognostic and therapeutic importance, especially with the increased application of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapies.1,2,3,4 As such, MSI-H has become an important genomic biomarker with applications across several types of cancer. As a result, testing for MSI-H is now recommended by consensus guidelines internationally.5,6,7,8

Meriem Sefta, Chief Diagnostics Officer, said, "This strategic alliance with MSD is focused on improving the way patients are diagnosed and receive treatment, advancing our shared mission of supporting healthcare providers in their adoption of innovative digital diagnostics. It is clear that there is a need for AI diagnostics that can both ease bottlenecks and resource pressures while also ramping up biomarker testing to match patients with optimal treatments."

This collaboration seeks to develop a pre-screening procedure to improve testing rates for MSI-H in endometrial, gastric, small intestinal, and biliary cancers. In these cancer types, MSI-H prevalence is low and MSI-H screening is not routinely performed. The collaboration will initially be focused in the European Union.

"The application of AI technologies holds tremendous potential in the screening of patients and the diagnosis of disease," said Scott K. Pruitt, associate vice president and head, Translational Oncology, MSD Research Laboratories. "We look forward to working with the Owkin team toward harnessing this opportunity to identify more patients with MSI-H cancers who may benefit from ICI therapy."

Owkin, which currently has the only MSI digital pathology diagnostic CE-marked in colorectal cancer, will extend the development of its MSI-H AI diagnostics into four new cancer types, leveraging multimodal patient data from multiple academic centers and hospitals.

On December 19, 2023 Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) reported that its executives will be speaking at the following investor conference (Press release, Illumina, DEC 19, 2023, View Source [SID1234638692]):

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42nd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on January 9, 2024
Presentation at 9:00am Pacific Time (12:00pm Eastern Time) immediately followed by a Q&A Session to begin at approximately 9:20am Pacific Time (12:20pm Eastern Time)

The webcast can be accessed through the Investor Info section of Illumina’s website at investor.illumina.com. A replay will be posted on Illumina’s website after the event and will be available for at least 30 days following.