On June 21, 2022 Verismo Therapeutics, a recent University of Pennsylvania spin-out company behind the novel KIR-CAR platform technology for CAR T-cells, reported that Penn and Verismo entered into a Sponsored Research Agreement (SRA) (Press release, Verismo Therapeutics, JUN 21, 2022, View Source [SID1234616143]). Under the SRA, Verismo is funding additional KIR-CAR T-cell focused preclinical research programs at Penn to advance new potential treatment options for solid tumor indications. The research funded under the SRA is expected to be conducted over four years, from 2021 to 2025, in the Penn laboratories of Michael C. Milone, MD, PhD, an associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Donald L. Siegel, MD, PhD, a professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

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Dr. Milone, with Dr. Carl June, is the co-inventor of the CTL019 CAR T product that became the first FDA-approved CAR T cell therapy, and he is the lead inventor of the KIR-CAR technology. Under the SRA, Dr. Milone and his lab are working to advance the KIR-CAR platform engineering and are performing key preclinical research for the purpose of enabling an IND for future clinical studies involving the KIR-CAR platform.

Dr. Siegel is a leading innovator in phage display technology. Under the SRA, Dr. Siegel and his lab are utilizing this technology to generate novel antibodies to cancer targets, which will expand Verismo’s product pipeline and potentially enable the treatment of additional tumor indications.

"Our ongoing collaboration with Penn brings us closer to our goal to treat solid tumors. Dr. Milone and Dr. Siegel have a clear vision of what scientific advances are needed to advance our progress and pipelines. I am hopeful that the collaboration between Penn and Verismo will accelerate the development of the KIR-CAR therapy and ultimately bring a new much needed treatment option to patients with solid tumors," said Dr. Bryan Kim, CEO of Verismo.

Editor’s Note: Drs. June, Milone, Siegel, and Penn are equity holders in Verismo. Penn has licensed certain Penn-owned intellectual property to Verismo and Drs. June, Milone, and Siegel, along with Penn, may receive financial benefits under the license in the future. Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine receives sponsored research funding from Verismo to support certain research and development programs at Penn.

On June 21, 2022 Truveta reported a strategic collaboration with Pfizer to deliver new safety insights on a continuous basis, using verifiable real-world data at scale (Press release, Pfizer, JUN 21, 2022, View Source [SID1234616128]). Truveta will provide Pfizer with an unprecedented data platform for research. The data collected by Truveta are always flowing, providing the most up-to-date picture of U.S. health. Pfizer will use de-identified data from Truveta to identify, monitor, and evaluate potential signals in near-real time, informing efforts to mitigate risks and enabling further research.

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Truveta is the world’s first health system-led data platform with a vision of Saving Lives with Data. Truveta’s 20 innovative health system members provide more than 16 percent of U.S. patient care from tens of thousands of clinical care sites across 42 states and provide ongoing governance to Truveta.

"Truveta’s dataset is one of the most timely and complete datasets available in the United States, allowing Pfizer to learn directly from de-identified patient data at an unprecedented pace and scale," said Dr. Aida Habtezion, Chief Medical Officer, and Head of Worldwide Medical and Safety, Pfizer. "This enhances our best-in-class monitoring systems, through near real-time monitoring of safety signals in an expansive patient population. We hope to continue to find additional benefit from this growing data such as identifying and addressing health disparities."

"Truveta’s vision is Saving Lives with Data, and we are inspired to work with Pfizer to fight the devastating impacts of COVID-19 and other health conditions," said Terry Myerson, CEO of Truveta. "We are excited to work closely with Pfizer as we build the largest and most complete data platform for U.S. health, readily accessible through a complete analytics solution. With Truveta, researchers can be empowered with real-time data to find cures, advance patient care, and transform healthcare in the U.S. The world needs answers to medical questions faster and together, we can help."

Learning in Real Time with Real World Data

Truveta’s data platform empowers researchers to quickly monitor, query and evaluate health data from more than 50 million de-identified patient journeys, covering a broad range of diversity of the U.S. Data are updated daily and includes the full Electronic Medical Record (EMR), not just the medical bill from claims data, all fully anonymized and aggregated. This clinical data is linked across providers and with medical claims when care is provided outside Truveta’s network. Every patient record is enhanced with comprehensive socio-economic data and daily mortality data for a complete picture of each patient’s health journey.

Putting the Researcher at the Center with Trusted Data

In close partnership with its health system members, Truveta puts the researcher front and center in their efforts – creating the opportunity to access data for real-time learning. Truveta’s learning community connects life science and health systems to innovate collaboratively, ​speed time to insights, and earn trust through transparency and ​reproducibility of research.

"As the first health system to deliver the first COVID-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial from Pfizer-BioNTech in the U.S., we are thrilled to join together as we continue to fight this pandemic," said Michael Dowling, President and CEO of Northwell Health. "The collaboration between Pfizer and Truveta is an extraordinary partnership between life science and our nation’s health systems all working together to ensure our communities are best protected from COVID and other health conditions."

On June 21, 2022 OncoHost, a global leader in next-generation precision oncology for improved personalized cancer therapy, reported a peer-reviewed article published in Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) (Free SITC Whitepaper) (JITC), a BMJ oncology journal (Press release, OncoHost, JUN 21, 2022, View Source [SID1234616144]). The study highlights the role of blood plasma proteomic profiling for assessing resistance in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients being treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs).

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Over the last decade, ICIs targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis have emerged as standard-of-care treatments for NSCLC. Although ICI therapy achieves impressive long-term survival in some, the overall response rate is modest, ranging from 20-30 percent in NSCLC patients. A significant proportion of patients display innate resistance to ICIs, and many of those who derive initial clinical benefit experience disease progression at a later stage. The mechanisms underlying innate and acquired resistance to ICIs are not yet fully understood.

The study, Longitudinal plasma proteomic profiling of non-small cell lung cancer patients undergoing immune checkpoint blockade, focuses on how ICI resistance can be predicted in NSCLC patients through proteomic profiling. The analysis was done using PROphet, OncoHost’s first-of-its-kind diagnostic platform that combines proteomic analysis with AI to predict patient response to immunotherapy and identify resistance associated processes.

"While ICIs have played a major role in revolutionizing cancer therapy, we are still lacking clear biomarkers to predict resistance in patients being treated with these modalities," said Dr. Michal Harel, Director of Science and Innovation at OncoHost. "In this study, we have analyzed the largest and deepest plasma proteome dataset for NSCLC patients receiving ICI-based treatment published so far, revealing a predictive signature for response to treatment comprised of two proteins and two clinical parameters using our AI-powered PROphet platform. In addition, using bioinformatic tools, we have identified 3 subtypes of patients based on their plasma proteome, each subtype with distinct clinical and functional characteristics. Altogether, these results have the power to create a paradigm shift in truly understanding and overcoming resistance to cancer by characterizing systemic proteomic changes along ICI-based therapy."

The paper was authored by a team of Israeli and international scientists and oncologists, including Dr. Michal Harel, Prof. Yuval Shaked, co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor at OncoHost, and professor of cell biology and cancer science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and Prof. Adam Dicker, a leading radiation oncologist at Thomas Jefferson University and Chief Medical Officer at OncoHost. Additional key investigators included Dr. David Carbone, professor of internal medicine and director of the James Thoracic Center, Prof. Jair Bar, Deputy Director, Institute of Oncology at Sheba Medical Center, and Dr. Alona Zer, Head, Department of Medical Oncology at Rambam Health Care Campus.

"This paper highlights continued success in our clinical trial initiatives as we prepare for the upcoming U.S. launch of PROphet," said Dr. Ofer Sharon, CEO of OncoHost. "We are finally making significant headway in overcoming the long-standing issue in clinical oncology of patient resistance to treatment. The knowledge that PROphet can provide clinicians with is an industry game-changer, and we are excited to be playing a part in transforming cancer patient care. I am proud of our team and look forward to what lies ahead."

On June 21, 2022 Race Oncology Limited ("Race") reported that two peer reviewed research poster abstracts detailing new preclinical data on the anti-cancer uses of Zantrene (also known as bisantrene or CS1) have been published in the prestigious scientific journal, Cancer Research, following their recent presentation at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Conference in New Orleans, from April 8 – 13, 2022 (Press release, Race Oncology, JUN 21, 2022, View Source [SID1234616227]).

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The two posters were presented by researchers from the City of Hope Hospital and Chicago University, including Race’s Scientific Advisory Board member, Professor Jianjun Chen. They describe the use of Zantrene as a potent inhibitor of FTO – the Fat Mass and Obesity-associated protein.

The first abstract describes preclinical data demonstrating Zantrene’s ability to inhibit FTO and suppress pancreatic carcinogenesis via targeting cancer stem cell maintenance. Pancreatic cancer has few effective treatment options and patients need better treatments for this devastating disease.

The second abstract explores the use of Zantrene as an adjunctive treatment able to overcome colorectal cancer resistant to 5-FU based chemotherapy via inhibition of FTO in both cell and mouse models. Resistance to 5-FU is a significant clinical issue as this drug remains a backbone of colorectal cancer treatment.

This important research exploring Zantrene utility in pancreatic cancer and colorectal cancer complements Race’s own recent findings that Zantrene can inhibit FTO in AML, melanoma and clear cell renal cell carcinoma.

On June 21, 2022 NKGen Biotech, a biotechnology company harnessing the power of the body’s immune system through the development of Natural Killer (NK) cell therapies, reported that senior management will be hosting one-on-one meetings at the Truist Securities Cell Therapy Symposium – symposia-cel being held in person in New York City on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 (Press release, NKGEN Biotech, JUN 21, 2022, View Source [SID1234616129]). Details on the symposium can be found below.

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Truist Securities Cell Therapy Symposium – symposia-cel (in person)
Format: Symposium and 1 x 1 meetings
Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Meeting Times: 12:30 pm – 5:00 pm EDT
Location: New York, NY
Registration: Event website

If you are interested in arranging a 1 x1 meeting with NKGen Biotech, please contact your Truist representative.