On April 8, 2020 Avectas reported that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued U.S. Patent No. 10,612,042, which is central to the company’s cell engineering technology, Solupore and expands Avectas’ global Intellectual Property portfolio (Press release, Avectas, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556221]). This patent covers an approach for delivering a payload, such as a protein and/or nucleic acid, across a plasma membrane of a cell.

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Avectas is a cell engineering technology business developing a unique delivery platform to enable the ex-vivo manufacture of gene-modified cell therapy products, which retain high in-vivo functionality. Avectas’ Solupore cell engineering technology has been developed to address challenges encountered with the manufacture of autologous and allogeneic cellular therapy products.

"Our patented cell engineering platform leverages a new mechanism to permeabilize the cell membrane and to enable the delivery of therapeutic molecules into the cell, enabling the production of functionally fitter cells to recognise and attack cancers," said Michael Maguire, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Avectas. "This granted patent is an important component in our IP portfolio, protecting value in our cell engineering platform. We look forward to continuing the development of Solupore to address the tremendous need for a new cell engineering technology for next-generation cell therapies."

This announcement comes at a time when Avectas has recently announced several collaborations this year. In March, Avectas announced a collaboration with Vycellix to advance next-generation solutions for the optimized manufacture of cell and gene therapies. In February, Avectas entered a Collaboration agreement with the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) based in Toronto, Canada to accelerate the translation of Avectas’ non-viral cell engineering platform (Solupore) into the clinic and in January Avectas joined the new NK Cell Centre of Excellence at Karolinska Institute as a partner.

About Solupore:

Solupore is a non-viral, cell engineering technology that permeabilizes the target cell membrane and allows efficient transport of cargo into cells whilst retaining very high levels of cell viability and functionality. The Solupore technology is designed for use with mRNA, DNA, and proteins, including gene-editing tools such as CRISPR and combination thereof. Solupore achieves excellent engineering efficiencies for delivery of these payloads to primary T cells and NK cells for immuno-oncology and gene editing applications.

On April 8, 2020 Immunovia AB (publ) ("Immunovia") reported that the company’s Lung Cancer collaboration with a global pharmaceutical company has been terminated (Press release, Immunovia, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556220]).

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Immunovia’s own early detection program in lung cancer continues as planned and the company has received the necessary fresh blood samples from the pharma partner for testing and analysis. Immunovia’s study is on track and will be finished in Q2 2020 as planned.

This is information that Immunovia is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 8:45 CET on April 8, 2020.

On April 8, 2020 CTI BioPharma Corp. (CTI BioPharma) (NASDAQ: CTIC) reported that management will provide a corporate overview at the Needham Healthcare Conference at 10:40 a.m. EDT (Press release, CTI BioPharma, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556219]). The conference will be held in a virtual meeting format.

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Presentation details:

Event:

Needham Healthcare Conference

Date:

Wednesday, Apr. 15

Time:

10:40 a.m. EDT

The presentation will be webcast live and available for replay from the Investors section of CTI BioPharma’s website at www.ctibiopharma.com.

On April 8, 2020 Prime Therapeutics LLC (Prime), a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) reported that serving more than 30 million members nationally, has named Joseph Leach, M.D., as senior vice president and chief medical officer (CMO) (Press release, Prime Therapeutics, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556217]). Dr. Leach brings over 20 years of experience as a clinician, researcher and health care leader to his role. He will lead the expansion of Prime’s specialty management capabilities and help shape the company’s total drug management strategy.

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Dr. Leach will partner with Blue Plan medical directors and pharmacy leaders to drive adoption of specialty and total drug management solutions. Dr. Leach brings deep experience as a medical oncologist and researcher to help the company’s clients and members navigate an era when million-dollar curative therapies – many in the oncology space – are coming to market.

He has held numerous leadership roles including medical director of Virginia Piper Cancer Institute in Minneapolis, past president of the Minnesota Society of Clinical Oncology and principal investigator for the Metro-Minnesota Community Oncology Research Consortium.

Dr. Leach has also held national leadership positions in research including committee chair for the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), which was one of the first publicly funded cooperative groups to perform multi-center clinical trials for cancer research. He was appointed to the NCI Thoracic Malignancy Steering Committee, an organization that directs the national research priorities and approves clinical trial concepts for lung cancer research.

"I couldn’t be more pleased to welcome Dr. Leach to Prime," said Prime’s President and CEO, Ken Paulus. "Dr. Leach’s depth of experience in oncology therapy coupled with his devotion to patient-focused care will offer superb value to our clients and their members. He is highly respected in the medical world and I’m certain Dr. Leach is the best person to help us navigate the complex and important work associated with managing the cost and use of revolutionary new treatments for complex illnesses."

"I’m delighted to join the team at Prime and to work with their Blue Plan clients to advance the company’s total drug management vision," said Dr. Leach. "I hope that my perspective as a physician, working with patients fighting devastating illnesses like cancer, can help keep us focused on our most important mission."

Dr. Leach holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. and earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He completed training in internal medicine and medical oncology at the University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City and is a board-certified medical oncologist.

On April 8, 2020 T-Cure Bioscience, Inc., a privately held company focused on developing autologous T cell receptor (TCR) therapy products for the treatment of solid tumors, reported that the Company has entered into an exclusive, worldwide license with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for intellectual property related to a TCR-based product candidate for the treatment of tumors expressing Kita-Kyushu lung cancer antigen 1 (KK-LC-1), for the treatment of KK-LC-1-expressing malignancies, such as gastric, lung, and breast cancers (Press release, T-Cure Bioscience, APR 8, 2020, View Source [SID1234556216]). T-Cure anticipates the KK-LC-1 TCR therapy will enter a multi-site Phase 1 clinical study in the second quarter of 2020 under the direction of Christian S. Hinrichs, M.D., Principal Investigator at the Experimental Transplantation and Immunology Branch (ETIB) at NCI.

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To support the preclinical and clinical research to develop the TCR product and future products targeting KK-LC-1, T-Cure has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the NCI. Under the CRADA, T-Cure will work to identify additional therapy candidates targeting KK-LC-1 using the Company’s proprietary TCR discovery platform, iSORT. The Company also intends to conduct an independent Phase 1 clinical trial in 2021 to further assess the safety and efficacy of the licensed KK-LC-1 TCR.

"The KK-LC-1 TCR technology forms the foundation of a new treatment strategy for a certain common, difficult to treat cancers," stated NCI’s Dr. Hinrichs.

"We are extremely excited to work with Dr. Hinrichs and his team at NCI to advance this novel TCR product candidate through preclinical and clinical development," stated Gang Zeng, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of T-Cure. "Dr. Hinrichs’ extensive experience in the discovery and development of novel adoptive T-cell therapies for cancer will be invaluable as we advance this program. Of note, the TCR was isolated from the tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes of a patient who had a complete response to an immunotherapy without any toxicities. As a result, we believe it holds great promise for engineering patients’ immune cells to effectively target and destroy cancer cells without harming healthy tissue."