On October 12, 2021 Upsher-Smith Laboratories, LLC (Upsher-Smith) reported that Ira Katz, RPh, owner of Little Five Points Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, is the winner of the 2021 National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) Willard B. Simmons Independent Pharmacist of the Year award (Press release, Upsher-Smith Laboratories, OCT 12, 2021, View Source [SID1234591170]). Katz received the award on Monday, October 11 at NCPA’s 123rd Annual Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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The annual award is given to a pharmacist who exhibits exemplary professional leadership, service to community and commitment to independent pharmacy. This year marks Upsher-Smith’s 13th year of sponsoring the prestigious award in conjunction with NCPA. The award is named in honor of Willard B. Simmons, a former executive secretary of NCPA (then known as the National Association of Retail Druggists) and a longtime trustee of the NCPA Foundation.

Katz opened the Little Five Points Pharmacy 40 years ago and has been recognized over the years for the contributions he’s made to his profession and community. As a pharmacist committed to reducing the number of lives lost due to opioid overdoses, Katz understands the importance of community education when it comes to opioid safety. Through his pharmacy, he provides naloxone (Narcan) administration education and has made the product available, free of charge, to those in the community, including local businesses and restaurants. Katz is a proud independent pharmacist and is frequently interviewed by local media outlets, sharing his knowledge and expertise with the community.

In addition to his service to the patient community, Katz is active within the professional community. He has been an NCPA member for more than 20 years. He is Chairman of the Board of the Georgia Academy of Independent Pharmacy (AIP) where he has been a board member for more than 25 years and also serves on the AIP Alternative Income Committee. He is also a member of the Georgia Pharmacy Association (GPhA), serving on its Governmental Affairs team.

"Ira Katz has played an invaluable role as a community pharmacist, and we couldn’t be more pleased to help NCPA recognize his achievements," said Rusty Field, President and CEO, Upsher-Smith. "Ira is a proven leader who has demonstrated that a pharmacist’s role goes far beyond dispensing medications. His efforts to educate and marshal resources to help those in need have single handedly made a difference in people’s lives."

"Ira’s leadership, dedication, and commitment to community make him a deserving recipient of this year’s Willard B. Simmons Independent Pharmacist of the Year Award," said NCPA CEO B. Douglas Hoey, pharmacist, MBA. "Ira’s service to his community has saved lives and is unwavering. He is a prime example of the importance of community pharmacies to people in cities and towns across America. We are grateful to Upsher-Smith for its support in recognizing exemplary pharmacists like Ira Katz."

On October 12, 2021 Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: STRO), a clinical-stage drug discovery, development and manufacturing company focused on the application of precise protein engineering and rational design to create next-generation cancer and autoimmune therapeutics, and BioNova Pharmaceuticals Limited (BioNova), a company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative medicines for the treatment of diseases with unmet medical needs, reported an option agreement for BioNova to develop and commercialize STRO-001, a CD74-targeting Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC), for patients with hematologic cancers, in Greater China, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (Press release, Sutro Biopharma, OCT 12, 2021, View Source [SID1234591100]).

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Under the terms of the agreement, BioNova has the option to obtain exclusive rights to develop and commercialize STRO-001 in Greater China. BioNova will pursue the clinical development, regulatory approval, and commercialization of STRO-001 in multiple indications, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and leukemia in the licensed territory. Sutro will retain development and commercial rights of STRO-001 globally outside of Greater China, including the United States. BioNova will pay to Sutro an initial licensing option payment of $4 million, with potential payments totaling up to $200 million related to option exercise, development, regulatory, and commercial milestones. Sutro will provide STRO-001 to BioNova under appropriate clinical and commercial supply service agreements. Upon commercialization, Sutro will receive tiered, double-digit royalties based on annual net sales of STRO-001 in Greater China.

"This strategic partnership of STRO-001 at this stage of its clinical development demonstrates the shared vision of Sutro and BioNova of the potential for this promising ADC," said Bill Newell, Chief Executive Officer of Sutro. "We believe BioNova is an ideal partner, having demonstrated success in business and clinical development and backed by marquee healthcare investors, to realize the potential for STRO-001 in multiple hematological cancers in Greater China, where there is a large unmet medical need."

"We are excited for the therapeutic potential of STRO-001 to be studied in new hematological cancers and in earlier disease settings," said Arturo Molina, Chief Medical Officer of Sutro. "In our clinical studies in the United States, we are exploring STRO-001 as a treatment for patients in later stages of multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma, and follicular lymphoma. We are approaching optimized dose levels in our dose-escalation trial—5.0 mg/kg in the multiple myeloma cohort and 4.2mg/kg in the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cohort."

Ye Hua, MD, MPH, founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BioNova added, "We are excited to collaborate with Sutro, a leading ADC technology company with a proprietary protein synthesis platform, to develop and commercialize STRO-001 in Greater China. STRO-001 has shown encouraging early efficacy signals and good tolerability profile in relapsed/refractory hematologic malignancies in the Phase 1 dose-escalation study. Given our strength in drug development in Greater China, we are committed to expedite the development of STRO-001 into Phase 2 expansion in multiple hematologic malignancies to fully explore the therapeutic potential of this ADC. The partnership further strengthens BioNova’s position in hematology and brings synergistic potential to our existing pipeline."

About STRO-001
STRO-001 is a CD74-targeting ADC, based on Sutro’s integrated cell-free protein synthesis and site-specific conjugation platform, XpressCF+, currently being investigated in a Phase 1 clinical trial. Sutro is currently enrolling patients with multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a dose-escalation trial and the maximum tolerated dose has not yet been reached. STRO-001 was granted Orphan Drug Designation by the FDA for multiple myeloma in October 2018.

On October 12, 2021 Transition Bio, Inc. (the Company) reported that named several critical additions to its leadership team, including naming Gregory Miller as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Prof. Tuomas Knowles as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Martin Kulander as Chief Operating Officer (COO) (Press release, Transition Therapeutics, OCT 12, 2021, View Source [SID1234591116]).

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Mr. Miller is a Boston-based biotechnology executive with extensive experience in value creation and corporate development transactions. He was previously Chief Business Officer at Atalanta Therapeutics and brings a successful track record in leading significant liquidity events as well as establishing strategic industry partnerships and collaborations. Greg will also join the Board of Directors.

Prof. Knowles, a Scientific Co-Founder and Director, will assume the role of CTO. He takes on this critically important position in addition to his current academic responsibilities at the University of Cambridge. Tuomas will lead the Company’s technology and data platform strategy as well as the overall direction of the CondensomicsTM platform.

Martin Kulander has joined as Chief Operating Officer (COO) where he will oversee the Company’s business operations. Mr. Kulander joins from AstraZeneca, where he held a range of leadership roles in the oncology commercial and R&D organizations, working on product development strategy and business development. Prior to AstraZeneca, Martin was a member of the investment team at Malin plc, and before that a strategy consultant at Trinity Life Sciences.

Joseph Grosso joins the team as Vice President of Oncology Translation from Bristol Myers Squibb, where he held positions of increasing leadership responsibility. Most recently, he led the development of Breyanzi, an approved CD19 CAR T therapy, across hematological indications. Dr. Grosso brings significant scientific leadership and translational experience in immuno-oncology to the Company. He received his B.S. in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Rochester and earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Miami. His post-doctoral training was at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he focused on novel checkpoint molecules including LAG-3 and PD-1 in tumor tolerance models.

The Company also announced that Dr. Sarah Teichmann, who recently joined the Company as a Scientific Co-Founder, will join its Board of Directors.

Kelly Martin, Executive Chairman, commented, "Over the last 12 to 18 months, we have been precisely focused on building a technology and data platform within the world of condensates cell biology. Our advancement to-date – in terms of speed and capability – has exceeded all of our internal expectations." Martin commented further, "Given our accelerated progress, this is the right time to aggressively add unique talent at all levels of the Company. Greg, Martin, Tuomas, Sarah, and Joe are all superb additions to the team."

Mr. Miller added, "The Company’s goal is quite straight forward: To be the leading technology and data driven company in the condensates cell biology space. Our discovery engine generates and learns from proprietary data of unparalleled breadth and depth, down to the single condensate level. The opportunities resulting from our discovery and analytical expertise will be second to none." Miller continued, "The team I am joining is world class and the output of their collective effort, in a such a short period of time, has been incredible. It’s an honor to be part of this company at this stage of its journey."

On October 12, 2021 Synlogic, Inc. (Nasdaq: SYBX), a clinical stage company bringing the transformative potential of synthetic biology to medicine, reported the publication in Nature of preclinical research with live biotherapeutic products designed using the Company’s Synthetic Biotic platform (Press release, Synlogic, OCT 12, 2021, View Source [SID1234591151]). In the study, a live biotherapeutic product modulated the tumor microenvironment and increased susceptibility to immunotherapy in a murine model. The research was led by Synlogic collaborators and Professor Roger Geiger of the Institute of Oncology Research, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Bellinzona, Switzerland.

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The paper, "Metabolic modulation of tumours with engineered bacteria for immunotherapy" demonstrated that, following intratumoral injection in a murine model, a live biotherapeutic Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 strain engineered to convert ammonia to L-arginine colonized and was active within the tumor microenvironment. Administration of this strain also resulted in increased numbers of tumor-infiltrating T cells and demonstrated synergistic anti-tumor activity when administered in conjunction with anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy.

It has been reported that low intratumoral levels of L-arginine in human cancers may contribute to an ineffective response to immunotherapy. The administration of live biotherapeutics has the potential to improve therapeutic response.

"We were very pleased to collaborate with Professor Geiger on this research and gratified to see a novel Synthetic Biotic approach published in Nature. The data demonstrate another potential method by which our therapeutic platform may be used to modulate underlying biology of relevance to human disease," said David Hava, Ph.D. Chief Scientific Officer at Synlogic. "We believe that our investigational live biotherapeutic approach holds great promise for the development of transformative therapeutics for a variety of serious diseases. We intend to steadfastly focus on our ongoing clinical programs in metabolic diseases, while also supporting the exploration of novel applications for our platform with academic leaders such as Dr. Geiger."

On October 12, 2021 Cellectis S.A. (NASDAQ: CLLS – EURONEXT GROWTH: ALCLS) (the "Company"), a gene-editing platform company with clinical-stage immuno-oncology programs using allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells and gene therapy programs for genetic diseases, reported that pre-clinical data that support anti-tumor activity of UCARTMESO will be presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) (Free SITC Whitepaper)’s 36th Annual Meeting (SITC 2021), to be held in Washington, D.C. and virtually on November 10 to 14, 2021 (Press release, Cellectis, OCT 12, 2021, View Source [SID1234591101]).

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Cellectis will present a poster on UCARTMESO, an allogeneic CAR-T cell product candidate targeting mesothelin – expressing solid tumors. Mesothelin is a tumor-associated antigen that is highly and consistently expressed in mesothelioma and pancreatic cancer and is also over-expressed in subsets of other solid tumors (ovarian cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, gastric cancer, triple-negative breast cancer). UCARTMESO also leverages its TALEN gene editing technology to resist immune suppression mediated by TGFβ.

Last May, during its Innovation Days, Cellectis announced the development of the new pre-clinical UCART product candidates targeting B-cell lymphomas and venturing for the first time into the solid tumor space.

Presentation Details:

Title: Mesothelin (MSLN) targeting allogeneic CAR-T cells engineered to overcome tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment

Poster Number: 143

Presenter: Roman Galetto, Ph.D, Director, Preclinical and Program Management

Date/Time: Friday November 12, 7:00AM – 8:30PM, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Poster Hall (Hall E)

Full text of the abstracts will be released on the SITC (Free SITC Whitepaper) website at 7:00 a.m. ET on November 12, 2021.