On April 15, 2021 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 it has appointed Steven Cha, M.D. as its Chief Medical Officer (Press release, NKGEN Biotech, APR 15, 2021, View Source [SID1234578709]). Dr. Cha will oversee the clinical development of NKGen Biotech’s lead product SNK01 as well as its pipeline of other novel NK cell therapies.

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"We are extremely pleased to have Steven join the NKGen Biotech team during this rapid growth phase for the Company," said Stephen Chen, Chief Operating Officer. "His broad expertise and leadership in oncology, early and late-stage drug development, and proficiency with business development transactions make him an ideal fit for NKGen Biotech," he concluded.

Dr. Cha has 15 years of R&D industry experience encompassing both large and small pharmaceutical companies. Since 2018 he has served as Vice President of Oncology at Samumed LLC, a privately held clinical-stage biotechnology company. Prior to that Dr. Cha was Senior Director, Global Clinical Lead at Pfizer focused on early oncology development. In his earlier roles Dr. Cha was Head of the metastatic breast cancer franchise at Puma Biotechnology, Senior Medical Director, Clinical Development at MEI Pharma, Medical Director at Allergan where he worked on Botox in urologic disorders, and Medical Director at Amgen where he was primarily focused on Nplate and blinatumomab.

Dr. Cha joins NKGen Biotech during an exciting period as the Company advances its allogeneic program towards IND filing while continuing work on SNK01 in refractory solid tumors in both monotherapy and combination therapy partnered programs.

"NK cell therapy represents a highly promising novel treatment paradigm in oncology," said Dr. Cha. "I am extremely enthusiastic about joining the NKGen Biotech team to work on SNK01 and the follow-on allogeneic and CAR-NK programs, which I believe have the potential to become best-in-class NK cell therapies for oncology patients."

Dr. Cha completed a BS in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California, San Diego and obtained his M.D. from the Tufts University School of Medicine. He has also completed fellowships in Hematology and Blood and Marrow Transplant at Stanford University.

On April 15, 2021 Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ: TECH) reported that Advanced Cell Diagnostics (ACD), a Bio-Techne brand, completed an extensive rebranding effort in response to increased demand for its Assay Services offered at its Newark, CA laboratory (Press release, Bio-Techne, APR 15, 2021, View Source;dedicated-source-for-rna-in-situ-hybridization-assays-in-spatial-gene-expression-analysis [SID1234578064]). At the heart of this re-launch is a name change from Pharma Assay Services to Professional Assay Services, with an expansion of offerings to global academic and clinical institutions, building on 10 years of experience providing services to our global pharma and biotech partners. Bio-Techne’s Professional Assay Services provide in situ hybridization (ISH) gene expression analysis for target discovery, biomarker validation, drug safety assessment, and assay prototype development directly from the RNAscope technology experts.

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In addition to providing the full line of RNAscope, BaseScope, and miRNAscope ISH assays, our Professional Assay Services also offers tissue procurement and processing, high resolution whole slide scanning, image analysis and digital pathology, as well as custom assay development. We have an expert multi-disciplinary team that includes Ph.D. scientists and M.D.s, who serve our clients as technical experts, image analysis specialists and board-certified pathologists, spanning a broad array of scientific disciplines. With direct access to the developers of the technology, the Assay Services team provides unparalleled expertise in Bio-Techne’s ISH platforms and delivers fast, high quality data designed to meet study objectives and timelines. The projects executed by our team follow Good Clinical Laboratory Practices (GCLP) based on guidelines from the World Health Organization.

"We are excited to announce the rebranding of our award-winning services to "Professional Assay Services", in line with the broadened access, expanding beyond biopharma partners, to include academic, health and clinical institutions," commented Kim Kelderman, President of Bio-Techne’s Diagnostics and Genomics Segment. "As leaders in RNAscope services, our goal is to facilitate target discovery and drug development with shortened timelines and in a cost-efficient manner. Now more labs can use this service to unlock the power of RNA in any target-any species-any gene with RNAscope to complement their single cell RNA sequencing, qPCR, or immunohistochemistry data."

The assay services team brings years of experience in custom assay development and optimization, as seen in the comments here from the R&D team at Exicure, "Our experience working with Advanced Cell Diagnostics has been all-around excellent. With their expertise and through clear communication, we developed several assays to detect both RNA and short oligonucleotides in tissue. Compared to standard complementary probes, the signal we obtained using these services was evident and specific. After seeing the first images, we immediately knew we wanted to use these techniques more frequently."

By partnering with the Professional Assay Services scientific team for the full suite of service offerings, customers can be confident in the science and be satisfied with actionable results in weeks rather than months.

On April 15, 2021 Avid Bioservices, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDMO) (the "company"), a dedicated biologics contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) working to improve patient lives by providing high quality development and manufacturing services to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, reported that it has completed the redemption of all of the company’s outstanding 10.50% Series E Convertible Preferred Stock ("Series E Preferred Stock") as of April 12, 2021 (the "Redemption Date") (Press release, Avid Bioservices, APR 15, 2021, View Source [SID1234578083]).

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In a press release dated March 10, 2021, the company announced its intention to utilize a portion of the proceeds from its recent offering of exchangeable senior notes to redeem all of the company’s outstanding Series E Preferred Stock. Each share of Series E Preferred Stock was redeemed at a redemption price equal to the liquidation amount of $25.00 per share plus accrued and unpaid dividends per share up to, but excluding, the Redemption Date. As a result of the completed redemption, the Series E Preferred Stock is no longer outstanding nor listed as CDMOP on the NASDAQ Stock Market.

On April 15, 2021Transcenta Holding Limited (Transcenta), a clinical stage global biotherapeutics company with fully-integrated capabilities in discovery, development and manufacturing of antibody-based therapeutics, reported that preclinical data of TST005, a bi-functional anti-PD-L1 and TGF-β trap fusion protein, in a poster during the 2021 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Virtual Annual Meeting, being held from April 10th to 15th and May 17th to 21st (Press release, Transcenta, APR 15, 2021, View Source [SID1234578100]).

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Title:
The preclinical characterization of TST005, a bi-functional anti-PD-L1 and TGF-β trap fusion protein

Abstract Number: 972
Poster Number: 917

Session Category:
Antibody Technologies

Session Title:
Experimental and Molecular Therapeutics

Poster launch time:
April 10th, 2021, 8:30 a.m.ET, U.S. time

About TST005
TST005, is a bi-functional anti-PD-L1 and TGF-β trap fusion protein designed to simultaneously target two immuno-suppressive pathways, transforming growth factor β-(TGF-β) and programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1), that are commonly used by cancer cells to evade the immune system. TST005 consists of a high affinity PD-L1 antibody fused with an engineered TGF-β Receptor Type II protein in its C-terminal. TST005 lacks FcR binding and has reduced risk of FcR mediated killing of PD-L1 expressing effector T cells. TST005’s PD-L1 high binding activity and enhanced TGF-β trap stability enables the targeted delivery of TGF-β trap into PD-L1 expressing tumors, thereby minimizing off-target toxicities of systemic inhibition of TGF-β signaling. TST005 displayed potent activity in vitro in reversing TGF-β induced T-cell suppression. In multiple syngeneic tumor models, TST005 induced significant increase of CD8 T-cell infiltration into PD-L1 expressing tumors and displayed dose-dependent tumor growth inhibition. TST005 is well tolerated in non-human primates and displayed a linear PK profile. TST005 is a potential novel bi-functional immunotherapy candidate with improved therapeutic window.

On April 15, 2021 Biosplice Therapeutics, Inc. ("Biosplice"), a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering therapeutics based on alternative pre-mRNA splicing for major diseases, reported it has closed $120 million in equity financing from a new biotechnology investment syndicate (Press release, Biosplice Therapeutics, APR 15, 2021, View Source [SID1234607835]). Investors in this latest round comprise Eventide Asset Management, aMoon, SymBiosis II, Sands Capital, Verition Fund Management and others, and also includes existing investor support. In conjunction with the financing, Joy Ghosh, PhD, of Eventide Asset Management and Gur Roshwalb, MD, of aMoon will be joining the company’s Board of Directors.

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"We are delighted to align with our new investors and board behind the immense therapeutic potential of Biosplice," said Cevdet Samikoglu, Chief Executive Officer of Biosplice. "This investment round positions us to accelerate the development and launch of lorecivivint, our groundbreaking Phase 3 program in osteoarthritis. In addition, we expect to realize the tremendous potential of our oncology program, as well as neurology and other areas of significant unmet need."

Joy Ghosh, PhD, of Eventide Asset Management, added, "Biosplice’s alternative splicing platform has enormous potential to address critical needs in osteoarthritis, oncology and neurology, among others. We are particularly excited by lorecivivint, which has the potential to be a first-in-class medicine that could confer both symptomatic and disease-modifying benefits to hundreds of millions of osteoarthritis sufferers worldwide."