On December 1, 2020 Proscia, a leading provider of digital and computational pathology solutions, reported that it has secured $23 million in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from Hitachi Ventures, the strategic corporate venture capital arm of Hitachi, Ltd., bringing its funding total to $35 million (Press release, Proscia, DEC 1, 2020, View Source [SID1234572044]). The company will use the investment to accelerate its global growth and strengthen its position of leadership in transforming cancer research and diagnosis at a time when demand for modernizing pathology is higher than ever.

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The practice of pathology sits at the core of biomedical research and cancer diagnosis. Until recently, this practice has remained largely unchanged in its 150-year history, depending solely on the human eye recognizing patterns in tissue under the microscope. With its Concentriq software platform, Proscia is accelerating the transformation to digital pathology, which centers around high-resolution images of tissue biopsies, as the new standard of care. Concentriq combines enterprise scalability with powerful AI applications to help laboratories, health systems, and life sciences companies unlock new insights, accelerate breakthroughs, and improve patient outcomes.

"Digitization has swept through almost every domain of healthcare, and we are now seeing its revolutionary impact on pathology," said Alexander Niehenke, Partner at Scale Venture Partners. "Proscia is a high-growth company with a unique platform-plus-AI approach that is enabling it to capitalize on a multi-billion-dollar market opportunity. We’re excited to be a part of Proscia’s success as it expands its leadership position in pathology’s shift from analog to digital."

The infusion of capital will enable Proscia to continue to meet growing demand for digital pathology across research and diagnostics. The company will use the funds to accelerate commercial expansion, ramping up its global sales, marketing, and support teams. Proscia will also further drive pathology’s data-driven future by expanding its data assets and AI application portfolio, building off of the initial success of its DermAI application. The investment will additionally advance Proscia’s regulatory strategy to secure FDA clearance, drawing on the foundation that the company has established with its CE Mark and MDSAP certification.

Since closing its Series A round in 2018, Proscia has amassed a customer base of laboratory titans and digital pathology pioneers as well as 10 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. This includes Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Joint Pathology Center (JPC), the premiere pathology reference center for the U.S. government. JPC selected Concentriq to drive a complete modernization of its pathology practice and digitize the world’s largest human tissue repository of over 55 million slides, unleashing a transformative wave of biomedical research. Proscia also recently established a Computational Pathology Center of Excellence with University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht, one of the first organizations in the world to implement digital pathology. As part of this collaboration, UMC Utrecht will deploy Proscia’s AI applications into its high-throughput workflows leveraging Concentriq.

"We are excited for this next milestone in our journey," said David West, CEO of Proscia. "Over the past few years, we have battle tested Concentriq at leading organizations and demonstrated the unprecedented potential of AI. In welcoming Scale Venture Partners and Hitachi Ventures to the Proscia team, we are better positioned than ever before to drive a transformation that will impact millions of cancer patients and their families."

Proscia’s commercial traction comes amid a surge in digital pathology adoption. Laboratories have increasingly shifted to digital to overcome the manual and subjective nature of the traditional standard of care and keep pace with the rising cancer burden. In the U.S. alone, pathologists have faced a 42% rise in diagnostic workload over the last decade, a challenge that will continue to intensify as the total number of cancer cases is projected to increase by 55% by 2030. Recently, laboratories have been implementing digital pathology to maintain operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, as digitization is the only means by which they can continue to serve patients.

"Digital pathology is quickly becoming the expected standard of diagnosis," said Steve Holloway, Company Director & Principal Analyst at Signify Research. "The global pandemic has exacerbated longstanding pressures, accelerating adoption. This market has now crossed an inflection point, with a critical mass of digital laboratories creating the momentum for more widespread implementation of digital pathology and augmentation by artificial intelligence."

On December 1, 2020 Tallac Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company harnessing the power of innate and adaptive immunity to fight cancer, reported the completion of its Series A financing totaling $62 million (Press release, Tallac Therapeutics, DEC 1, 2020, View Source [SID1234572043]). Tallac is backed by a syndicate of leading global life science venture firms including venBio Partners, Morningside Venture, Lightstone Ventures, Matrix Partners China, and MRL Ventures Fund. The Company plans to use the Series A funding to advance the discovery and development of immunotherapy candidates for multiple solid tumor maligniancies. Its pipeline of next generation immunotherapies are derived from its novel Toll-like Receptor Agonist Antibody Conjugate (TRAAC) platform.

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Immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors and adoptive CAR-T therapies have become foundational treatment options in oncology, yet the majority of patients only receive a temporary benefit or no benefit as they either develop resistance to treatment or are non-responsive to treatment. Novel immunotherapies known as Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonists are a class of immunotherapy that generates both an innate and adaptive immune response which may produce more robust and durable anti-cancer immunity to help overcome resistance.

"We believe targeting innate immunity represents a transformative approach to creating the next-generation of breakthrough therapeutics in cancer immunotherapy," said Dr. Hong I. Wan, president, CEO and co-founder of Tallac Therapeutics. "Our team has generated robust preclinical data on the Toll-like Receptor Agonist Antibody Conjugate (TRAAC) platform that we recently presented at the 2020 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) (Free SITC Whitepaper) annual meeting. With the support of our existing and new investors, I am excited to lead the Tallac team on its mission to advance first-in-class therapies for the benefit of patients in desperate need of new treatment options."

"Tallac has developed a scientifically innovative technology platform to create potent, systemically delivered therapeutics with the potential to provide powerful innate and adaptive anti-tumor immunity across multiple tumor types," said Corey Goodman, board chair, co-founder of Tallac Therapeutics and Managing Partner at venBio. "We are pleased to see the progress made by the team during the seed stage and look forward to supporting Tallac as they advance their pipeline towards the clinic."

Tallac Therapeutics was founded in 2018 by Drs. Goodman and Wan (previously CSO of ALX Oncology) with two other co-founders, Dr. Jaume Pons (currently CEO of ALX Oncology) and Dr. Curt Bradshaw (most recently CSO at Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals), to develop technology for targeted immune activation using an antibody-immune activator conjugate. The research team at Tallac has significant biologics discovery and development expertise. Most recently, under Dr. Wan’s leadership at ALX Oncology, the team designed and advanced ALX148, a best-in-class myeloid checkpoint inhibitor, for multiple tumor indications.

On December 1, 2020 LianBio, a biotechnology company focused on bringing paradigm-shifting medicines to patients in China and other major Asian markets, reported that the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) of the China National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has cleared the Company’s Clinical Trial Application (CTA) to conduct the Phase 2a trial of infigratinib in patients with locally advanced or metastatic gastric cancer or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma with FGFR2 gene amplification (Press release, LianBio, DEC 1, 2020, View Source [SID1234572042]).

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LianBio has in-licensed the oncology rights for infigratinib from QED Therapeutics, an affiliate of BridgeBio Pharma, Inc., and is responsible for the clinical development, registration application and future commercial operations of the product candidate in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

Infigratinib is an investigational oral, selective inhibitor of fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) 1-3 that has shown activity in clinical measures, such as overall response rate, in patients with chemotherapy-refractory cholangiocarcinoma with FGFR2 fusions and advanced urothelial carcinoma with FGFR3 genomic alterations [1][2]. The Phase 2a trial is a multicenter, single-arm study designed to explore and evaluate the pharmacokinetic profile, efficacy and safety of infigratinib in patients with locally advanced or metastatic gastric cancer or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma with FGFR2 gene amplification. Infigratinib is also currently under Phase 3 global development by LianBio and BridgeBio for patients with FGFR2 fusion positive cholangiocarcinoma.

"With strong support from our partner, BridgeBio, the exploratory study highlights LianBio’s continued commitment to expand its global footprint and develop potential breakthrough therapeutics in China," said Dr. Bing Li, Chief Executive Officer of LianBio. "Gastric cancer is the third most common cancer in China, causing approximately 300,000 deaths every year. This clearance by the China NMPA to conduct the Phase 2a trial of infigratinib in gastric cancer will enable LianBio to work towards addressing the significant unmet medical need for this growing patient population."

References

Javle M. et al. A phase II study of infigratinib (BGJ398), an FGFR-selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), in patients with previously-treated advanced cholangiocarcinoma containing FGFR2 fusions; ESMO (Free ESMO Whitepaper) 2018 Annual Meeting. Poster #LBA28.
Pal K. et al. Efficacy of BGJ398, a Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 1-3 inhibitor, in patients with previously treated advanced urothelial carcinoma with FGFR3 alterations; Cancer Discovery 2018.

On December 1, 2020 Turnstone Biologics Corp., a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of engineered viral immunotherapies, reported enrollment of the first patients in a Phase 1/2a clinical trial (RAPTOR) of its RIVAL-01/TAK-605 candidate in patients with solid tumors, conducted in collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited ("Takeda") (Press release, Turnstone Biologics, DEC 1, 2020, View Source [SID1234572041]). RIVAL-01 consists of Turnstone’s proprietary oncolytic vaccinia virus backbone encoding transgenes for Flt3 ligand, anti-CTLA-4 antibody and IL-12 cytokine, purposefully designed to work together to drive immune activity and re-program the microenvironment to be best suited for tumor eradication.

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"The enrollment of the first patients into our Phase 1/2a trial is a key milestone for Turnstone and meaningfully advances our aim of transforming the treatment paradigm for people with cancer," said Mike Burgess, Ph.D., President of R&D, Turnstone. "The meticulous design of our differentiated vaccinia virus platform enabled us to engineer RIVAL-01 to deliver three powerful immune modulating agents locally to primary and metastatic tumor sites, by either intratumoral or systemic administration. We look forward to sharing future updates as the study progresses."

Turnstone’s RIVAL therapeutic pipeline is based on its proprietary vaccinia virus platform, which has been engineered for enhanced immune-stimulation and tumor cell selectivity, potent oncolysis and large transgene carrying capacity. The transgenes are designed to be expressed when the vaccinia virus, delivered either intratumorally or intravenously, enters and replicates in cancer cells. The resulting local production of these therapeutics at the site of tumors adds to the inherent oncolytic and microenvironment-modifying properties of the virus to form a powerful multi-modal attack on the disease. RIVAL-01 is being co-developed and co-commercialized under a global collaboration with Takeda.

"Takeda’s partnership with Turnstone continues to gain momentum. Our teams successfully collaborated to establish the RIVAL-01/TAK-605 clinical development plan while simultaneously working together to advance additional novel next-generation multi-payload oncolytic virus concepts to the clinic", said Chris Arendt, Ph.D., Head, Oncology Therapeutic Area Unit, Takeda. "The trial enrollment represents an important step forward in our collaboration and ongoing efforts to leverage innate and adaptive immunity to overcome the limitations of current immuno-oncology therapies."

The RAPTOR trial will evaluate the safety and efficacy of RIVAL-01 (formerly known as TBio-6517) administered intratumorally as a single agent and in combination with Keytruda (pembrolizumab) in patients with solid tumors, including triple negative breast cancer, microsatellite stable colorectal cancer, melanoma and cholangiocarcinoma. Patients are currently enrolling in Phase 1 dose escalation, which will be followed by an expansion phase in specified tumor types in the Phase 2a portion of the trial.

Additional information about the trial, including eligibility criteria and a list of clinical trial sites, can be found at View Source (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04301011).

On December 1, 2020 NanoString Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:NSTG), a leading provider of life science tools for discovery and translational research, reported the development of a spatial molecular imaging platform, a next generation solution for multiplexed analysis of RNA and protein expression for individual cells within a tissue sample (Press release, NanoString Technologies, DEC 1, 2020, View Source [SID1234572040]).

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The spatial molecular imager combines the power of high-plex profiling with high-resolution imaging to enable the analysis of hundreds to thousands of RNAs or proteins directly from single cells within morphologically intact tissue samples. The platform utilizes the company’s advanced Hyb & Seq chemistry, which over the last 18 months has been optimized for in situ spatial analysis. The platform is capable of profiling RNA and protein within a single cell down to sub-cellular resolution in multiple tissue types. To date, prototype systems have imaged RNA from as many as 1,000+ genes simultaneously across thousands of individual cells in Formalin-Fixed Paraffin Embedded (FFPE) tissue.

Tissue biology takes place on several spatial scales including multi-cellular, single cell and the sub-cellular levels. The GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) enables multi-cellular analysis at the whole transcriptome level to elucidate the behavior of populations of cells, such as those within a tumor or the tumor microenvironment. NanoString is developing the spatial molecular imager to address the unmet need for high-plex spatial analysis of single cells and sub-cellular resolution, ideally suited for targeted applications, such as creating cell atlases or studying cell-cell interactions. The GeoMx DSP and the spatial molecular imager are highly synergistic, creating a spatial biology portfolio that spans the continuum from targeted to whole transcriptome analysis, and from multicellular resolutions down to single cell and sub cellular applications.

"Spatial imagers measuring RNA and protein in situ at single-cell and sub-cell resolution are expected to emerge as an important product category over the next several years," said Brad Gray, president and CEO. "Our spatial molecular imaging platform can profile RNA and protein in FFPE with category-leading plex as well as high sensitivity and high resolution. Together, our GeoMx DSP and spatial imager form the leading spatial biology portfolio, spanning from discovery and translational research to clinical diagnostics."

"Researchers and clinicians have gained tremendous insights from the revolution in single cell biology in recent years, but the cellular context was always lost," said Christopher Mason, Ph.D., a geneticist who recently published research using GeoMx. "Now, biological discoveries can be elucidated from high-plex, multi-omic spatial imaging, revealing the key spatial interactions within and between normal or diseased tissues (e.g. COVID-19, cancer) and how these cells communicate and mediate phenotypes, change over time, and respond to therapies."

"Spatial molecular imaging opens up new possibilities to understand the diversity of T-cells infiltrating a tumor at the single cell level without dissociating tissue. Our work under the Technology Access Program has produced results on the location of different T-cell subsets and their interaction with tumors and could reveal which T-cell subsets are most important for controlling tumors," said Evan Newell, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The company plans to provide researchers access to the prototype versions of spatial molecular imaging platform through a Technology Access Program (TAP) beginning in 2021. Under the program, a TAP customer can submit tissue samples to NanoString to be analyzed using the spatial molecular imager and resulting data analysis reported back to the customer by NanoString. Full commercial launch of the spatial imaging solution consisting of instruments, consumables, and software is expected in the second half of 2022.

The Hyb & Seq chemistry was originally developed as part of a hybridization-based sequencing program. The company formed a strategic collaboration with Lam Research, under which Lam Research provided $50 million in funding and access to their industry-leading semi-conductor technology. This collaboration resulted in a robust and scalable chemistry that can be applied to a wide range of applications.

The company is hosting an Investor and Analyst Day webcast at 11:30am ET on Tuesday, December 1st, and will highlight the development program and new capabilities of the platform. Interested parties can access the webcast through the company’s website at View Source The webcast will be available on the company site for 90 days.

Researchers interested in participating in NanoString’s Technology Access Program should contact us at [email protected].