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BioNTech and Regeneron to Advance FixVac and Libtayo® (cemiplimab) Combination in Melanoma
“Despite recent treatment advances with anti-PD-1 therapies for patients with melanoma, most patients fail to obtain a durable benefit. The combination of Libtayo and BNT111 FixVac has the potential to augment the immune system’s ability to effectively recognize melanoma in multiple ways and hopefully improve immune targeting to control the cancer,” said Israel Lowy, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Translational Science and Oncology, at Regeneron.
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Cytovia Therapeutics Acquires Worldwide Rights to CytoImmune Therapeutics’ EGFR Dual-targeting CAR for NK Cell Treatment of GBM & Other Solid Tumors
Dr. Daniel Teper, Chairman and CEO of Cytovia added: “We are honored to collaborate with Dr. Caligiuri, a pioneer in translating biological research on NK cells into impactful therapeutics. He has published solid data with intracranial injection of EGFR CAR NK cells to support their clinical development in glioblastoma. Additionally, EGFR is a clinically validated target which will allow us to expand the use of NK cellular therapy in multiple solid tumors.”
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Strata Oncology Announces Partnership with BioMed Valley Discoveries to Accelerate Enrollment in ERK Inhibitor Study
“This partnership with BioMed Valley Discoveries supports our commitment to improving the lives of patients with cancer by providing local access to promising investigational therapies,” said Dan Rhodes, Ph.D., CEO of Strata Oncology. “We are confident our network of health system partners, standardized on the Strata Trial, will help drive rapid enrollment of this important study.”
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$249 million worth of contracts handed to seven diagnostic companies by NIH for their COVID-19 testing platforms
News came in on July 31st 2020, that National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Rapid acceleration diagnosis program (RADx) has handed out $248.7 million worth of contracts across seven diagnostic companies, after evaluating them in a competitive bidding for funding. Together, these companies should expand the daily COVID-19 testing capacity by 2%- covering 6 million people, a leap from the current 823000 tests administered daily.
Mesa Biotech: will use a palm sized detector for testing COVID-19 from nasal swabs, within 30 minutes, using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Award amount: $15.4 million.
Quidel Corporation: will use nasal swab material in a 15 minutes collection to results testing for COVID-19 using immunofluorescence-based lateral flow immunoassay identifying SARS-CoV 2 nucleocapsid proteins (Sofia SARS Antigen FIA test kit). Another platform delivers results from 50 samples within an hour (The Read Now or Batch Test Mode). Award amount: $71 million.
Talis Biomedical Corporation: will return test results within 30 minutes using isothermal amplification of viral RNA and an optical detection system, that stores generated data on cloud. Award amount: $25 million.
Ginkgo Bioworks: will use NGS based viral DNA/RNA screening and can scale up to 50,000- 100,000 tests per day, providing results by 24-48 hours from sample collection. Award amount: $40 million.
Helix OpCo: will scale daiy test numbers to 100,000/ day by bulk shipping samples to public healthcare departments and relevant healthcare systems to obtain results within 24-48 hours. Its own testing platform includes real-time RT-PCR for SARS-CoV2 nucleic acid detection. Award amount: $33.4 million.
Fluidigm Corporation: will upscale its microfluidics technology in COVID-19 testing, covering 6000 samples in 24 hours. Award amount: $37 million.
Mammoth Biosciences: will upscale its CRISPR-based COVID-19 detection system (called DETECTR test), to enable commercial labs across US to be able to use its technology for COVID-19 testing. Award amount: undisclosed.
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Sanofi-GSK collaboration gains $2.1 billion warp speed funding to provide free 100 million doses to the US of their COVID-19 vaccine
On July 31st 2020, Sanofi and GSK announced their COVID-19 vaccine collaboration received $2.1 billion federal backing to support the program through clinical trials, manufacturing upscale and delivering the first 100 million doses- free of charge- to the US government. Majority of the funding is mobilized towards Sanofi’s recombinant protein based COVID-19 vaccine development. The US government has a further option to procure additional 500 million doses in the future.
“The global need for a vaccine to help prevent COVID-19 is massive, and no single vaccine or company will be able to meet the global demand alone…From the beginning of the pandemic, Sanofi has leveraged its deep scientific expertise and resources to help address this crisis, collaborating with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to unlock a rapid path toward developing a pandemic vaccine and manufacturing at large scale. With our partner GSK, we expect our Phase 1/2 study for the recombinant adjuvanted approach to start in September.”- Thomas Triomphe, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Sanofi Pasteur.
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