On October 21, 2021 DYN’R Medical Systems and Mevion Medical Systems, the leader in compact proton therapy, reported the launch of a new gating option for their joint customers (Press release, Mevion Medical Systems, OCT 21, 2021, View Source [SID1234591756]).

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The SDX Respiratory Gating system helps to protect and prevent irradiation of unaffected healthy tissues and vital organs located close to a tumor. Its cutting-edge technology enhances therapeutic accuracy and incorporates direct lung volume measurement with clear bio-visual feedback to guide the patient throughout the session. The SDX System is the most effective proton therapy respiratory monitoring solution, especially during the lung, breast and liver treatments.

Following the development and the successful conclusion of the Verification & Validation (V&V) tests completed by Mevion and DYN’R teams between 2019 and 2020, the SDX System can now be synchronized with the MEVION S250i Proton Therapy System, automatically stopping the proton beam when tumor motion is detected. Made possible by the interoperability of the Mevion Beam Gating and the SDX Gating Module interfaces, the duo provides increased accuracy of high-dose treatments while, above all, maintaining patient safety.

The NCI-Designated OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center is the first center to utilize this powerful tool, in conjunction with Mevion’s HYPERSCAN pencil beam scanning technology, to rapidly deliver sharp and robust fields to patients with breast cancer.

"The development of the synchronized interface with MEVION S250i was an important target of our business development plan" said Francois Galzin, President & CEO of DYN’R Medical Systems. "We are pleased with the quality of our partnership with Mevion, and the launch of this new solution shows the efficiency of the works realized by our teams to fight together, and each day better against cancer. It will allow all our joint customers, wherever they are based on the planet, to benefit from a high-level solution made to manage respiratory motion while increasing their patient’s safety".

"We are committed to offer fully integrated and customizable motion management systems that enable our customers to select the best tools for their center," said Armin Langenegger, Director of Production Solutions at Mevion. "The successful partnership with DYN’R and the incorporation of the SDX Gating System compliments the speed and precision of the MEVION S250i, assuring the best possible outcomes for patients."

Prior to the installation, OU Health utilized the SDX System in Manual Mode, which significantly increases the treatment’s margin precision while treating moving tumors with the DYN’R deep inspiration breath-hold solution (DIBH). Therapists have real-time access to internal organ positioning and are empowered to manually stop the beam at any moment if they note any undesirable internal motion.

DYN’R and Mevion will be exhibiting at the upcoming American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) annual meeting in Chicago, IL from October 24th to the 26th and attendees are invited to visit the companies during the event to learn more.

On October 21, 2021 Leucid Bio ("Leucid" or the "Company"), a biotech company pioneering next-generation cell therapies for hard-to-treat cancers, reported that it has successfully raised £11.5 million in a Series A financing round (Press release, Leucid Bio, OCT 21, 2021, View Source [SID1234591675]). The investment was led by Epidarex and new investor Vulpes Investment Management, with participation from new investors 2Invest and Future Fund of the British Business Bank, and existing investor Sofinnova Partners. Proceeds from the financing will be used to initiate a Phase 1 trial of its lead candidate, LEU-011, for the treatment of platinum resistant ovarian cancer.

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CAR T-cell therapy is a revolutionary technology in which the patient’s own immune cells are reprogrammed so they can recognise and destroy cancer cells. This has proven to be a powerful therapy for refractory blood cancers but has not yet been very effective for the treatment of solid cancers.

Leucid was founded to translate 20 years of pioneering CAR-T research led by Dr John Maher at King’s College London who joined the Company from inception as its Chief Scientific Officer. Leucid has developed a proprietary engine that builds upon Dr Maher’s novel CAR-T model which develops CAR-T molecules designed to be in a more natural biological configuration of cells. The early development work was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Guy’s and St Thomas’ Biomedical Research Centre. The Company’s technology gives properties to the CAR-Ts that enable them to consistently outperform previous generations of CAR-T therapies in pre-clinical studies; enhancing T-cell potency and generating a persistent long-term response with reduced toxicity.

Leucid’s LEU-011 programme is a NKG2D CAR T-cell therapy in pre-clinical development for the treatment of solid tumours and haematological malignancies. The NKG2D receptor is an activating immune receptor that triggers cell death upon recognition of human NKG2D ligands expressed on transformed, infected or damaged cells. LEU-011 has potential for the treatment of multiple cancer types as NKG2D ligands are expressed on more than 80% of human tumour cells.

In conjunction with the Series A financing, Ian Miscampbell, Managing Partner of Sixth Element Capital LLP, has been appointed Chair of the Board, while Martin Diggle, Portfolio Manager of Vulpes Life Science Fund will join the Board of Directors as Non-Executive Director, and Heikki Lanckriet as Board Observer for 2Invest. Epidarex’s Peter Finan currently sits on the Board as Investment Director, and Graziano Seghezzi, Managing Partner of Sofinnova, and Michael Garrison, Director at King’s College London remain as Observers to the Board.

Artin Moussavi, Chief Executive Officer of Leucid Bio, said: "We are excited to welcome new investors to Leucid Bio. With support from this high calibre syndicate, the financing will enable us to progress our lead programme, LEU-011, into clinical development. At Leucid we are developing improved CAR-T technologies aimed to overcome key challenges in CAR T-cell therapy for solid tumours, to improve treatment outcomes and save the lives of cancer patients, where current treatments are not currently proving to be as clinically meaningful as required."

Ian Miscampbell, Chair of Leucid Bio’s Board of Directors, commented: "I am delighted to be joining as Chair of this trail-blazing Company as it moves into the clinical development phase, developing novel CAR-T therapies for patients who do not currently have a treatment option. I have been impressed by the excellent work achieved by the Leucid team and am excited to establish Leucid as a leading next generation CAR-T company."

Peter Finan, Partner at Epidarex Capital, said: "The new financing will allow us to explore Leucid’s ground-breaking technology in a clinical setting. We remain optimistic that with the right therapeutic approach, the challenges for CAR-T therapy in a solid tumour setting can be overcome. We look forward to working closely with the Leucid team and our co-investors to realise the potential of Leucid’s technology."

Martin Diggle, Principal at Vulpes Life Sciences, stated: "After performing extensive scientific due diligence, Vulpes is delighted to cornerstone this important fundraise to enable Leucid to advance its exciting cancer therapies. We believe Professor John Maher’s team has one of the most promising approaches to treating solid tumours in the world today and we are excited by the possibilities of its CAR-T research to date."

On October 21, 2021 Precision BioSciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: DTIL), a clinical stage biotechnology company using its ARCUS genome editing platform to develop allogeneic CAR T and in vivo gene editing therapies, reported that Derek Jantz, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder, will present at the Jefferies Virtual Gene Therapy/Gene Editing Summit, being held October 27-28, 2021 (Press release, Precision Biosciences, OCT 21, 2021, View Source [SID1234591694]).

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Details for the fireside chat are below:

Jefferies Virtual Gene Therapy/Gene Editing Summit
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2021
Time: 1:30 to 1:55 ET PM

The Company expects to report that a balance of cash and cash equivalents is approximately $160.5 million as of September 30, 2021. The Company continues to expect that existing cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to fund planned operations into 2023.

A live webcast of the fireside chat will be accessible on the Company’s website in the Investors section under Events & Presentations: View Source An archived replay of the webcast will be available for approximately 30 days.

On October 21, 2021 Researchers from the University of Dundee and Promega Corporation reported that they have shown how a "three-headed hydra" significantly improves efficacy in targeted protein degradation (Press release, Promega, OCT 21, 2021, View Source [SID1234591720]). This discovery opens new possibilities in a field that is revolutionizing drug discovery for cancer and other targets. The research is published today in Nature Chemical Biology.

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Targeted Protein Degradation

Targeted protein degradation is an area of chemical biology that is revolutionizing drug discovery. It involves co-opting the cell’s natural disposal systems to also remove disease-causing proteins. This system is applicable to diverse therapeutic areas including oncology, inflammation, dermatology, immunology, and respiratory diseases.

Degrading a target protein offers several advantages over traditional inhibitors. This type of drug may show a greater response even at lower doses, and it is more precise with potentially reduced side effects and disease resistance. The first compounds in this class, termed Proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs), are being trialed as candidate medicines against various cancers and progressing through clinical trials.

PROTACs are conventionally small molecules designed with two heads, called bivalent or heterobifunctional compounds. However, new research carried out by Dundee’s Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation (CeTPD) in collaboration with biotechnology company Promega broke away from this conventional design and showed that degraders can be significantly improved by making them trivalent, i.e. consisting of three heads.

Novel Trivalent PROTACs

The best trivalent PROTAC designed by the researchers proved to be remarkably more potent than their bivalent predecessor compounds, showing in cellular studies stronger anti-cancer activity at a much lower dose and improved pharmacological responses over a wider dose range.

"Three heads can be better than two in PROTACs," says Dr. Alessio Ciulli, Director of the Center for Targeted Protein Degradation. "We hypothesized that we could improve degraders by latching onto the target protein more productively. To do this, we designed trivalent PROTACs by adding an additional protein-binding ligand, in effect creating a three-headed monster that destroys cancer-causing proteins more effectively."

The Dundee/Promega team demonstrated that the new PROTAC works due to the combined effect of two important features of protein and small molecule molecular recognition – avidity and cooperativity. Avidity refers to the combined strength of multiple interactions between two molecules. Cooperativity is a phenomenon shown by molecules with multiple binding sites in which the affinity of the remaining binding sites is increased after a ligand binds to one of them.

The researchers conclude that the trivalent PROTAC concept offers a new strategy that is shown to improve on many aspects of degrader drug action and could in future be applied to a wider range of protein targets, including those thought to be undruggable. If this is shown to be the case, it raises the possibility of scientists being able to develop drugs more easily for diseases for which there are currently no effective treatments, greatly expanding the number of available therapeutics.

"We took a significant risk with this project, but its success has opened new doors for the design of highly potent degraders, as well as other multi-specific compounds," says Dr. Danette Daniels, Senior Research Scientist and Group Leader at Promega Corporation.

Learn More

For more information, read the paper published today in Nature Chemical Biology.

To learn more about Targeted Protein Degradation at Promega, visit www.promega.com/NatureTPD

On October 21, 2021 Exacis Biotherapeutics, Inc., a development-stage immuno-oncology company working to harness the immune system to cure cancer, reported initiation of a strategic partnership with Toronto-based Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) for specialty manufacturing services related to the development of Exacis’ innovative, iPSC-derived mRNA-engineered NK cell products to treat cancer (Press release, Exacis Biotherapeutics, OCT 21, 2021, View Source [SID1234591758]). The partnership also includes a cash investment into Exacis by CCRM Enterprises Holdings Ltd., the for-profit venture investment arm of CCRM, which will be used to fund operations.

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Exacis CEO Gregory Fiore, MD, commented, "We welcome CCRM as a key partner to allow us to rapidly advance our virus-free manufacturing processes to make novel NK cell products that are engineered for performance and to avoid rejection. CCRM is a recognized leader in iPSC-derived cell therapy development and manufacturing and we are thrilled to have them as a partner. Their confidence in Exacis is evidenced by the accompanying investment, by CCRM Enterprises Holdings Ltd., underscoring the unique value proposition offered by Exacis’ differentiated platform and approach to cell therapies. We look forward to partnering with CCRM’s CDMO experts to apply our mRNA based technologies to develop best-in-class products to treat challenging hematologic and solid tumors."

Cynthia Lavoie, PhD, President and CIO of CCRM Enterprises Inc. added, "We are pleased to support Exacis by way of an investment, and with our sector expertise and specialized infrastructure. This is a successful model that we have employed in the past to support promising technologies and together we will develop leading cell therapy products that utilize the substantial potential of the Exacis platform as it advances its iPSC-derived cell programs.