News round-up for 22-26 April by DDW Digital Content Editor Diana Spencer. The leading news story this week has been the launch of a new clinical trial in the UK for a melanoma personalised mRNA cancer vaccine, but there have been a number of other interesting developments in cancer drug discovery. These include the detection of new targets for skin cancer treatment, the benefits of vitamin D for cancer prevention, an extended approval in the EU for a CAR-T myeloma therapy and the discovery of an unusual source of targeted treatments. The top stories: Discovery reveals two potential drug targ ..read more

A clinical trial of a personalised mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma patients has been launched in the UK.  As reported by The Guardian, the global Phase III clinical trial is being led by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) and will include around 1,100 people, with the UK arm taking place across eight centres in the UK.   It will trial the cancer vaccine known as mRNA-4157 (V940) which works by triggering the immune system to target neoantigens on tumours.    mRNA-4157/V940 is a novel mRNA-based personalised cancer vaccine that encode ..read more

Researchers have found that vitamin D encourages the growth of a type of gut bacteria in mice which improves immunity to cancer. The researchers from the Francis Crick Institute, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Aalborg University in Denmark, found that mice given a diet rich in vitamin D had better immune resistance to experimentally transplanted cancers and improved responses to immunotherapy treatment. The team found that vitamin D acts on epithelial cells in the intestine, which in turn increase the amount of a bacteria called Bacteroid ..read more

The European Commission (EC) has approved a Type II variation for Carvykti (ciltacabtagene autoleucel; cilta-cel) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma (RRMM). It is approved in patients who have received at least one prior therapy, including an immunomodulatory agent (IMiD) and a proteasome inhibitor (PI), who  have demonstrated disease progression on the last therapy, and are refractory to lenalidomide. Cilta-cel is a chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy directed against B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA), a protein that is highly e ..read more

This is the latest episode of the free DDW narrated podcast, titled “A look behind the scenes of the drug discovery industry” which covers three written for Volume 23 – Issue 4, Fall 2022 of DDW. They are called: Going paperless – the move to electronic lab notebooks, New horizon for cancer innovation, and A personal touch: the role of bioprinting in drug discovery. In the first article, Barry Bunin, PhD, CEO of Collaborative Drug Discovery explores the rise of electronic lab notebooks and why researchers should be transitioning to digital methods of recording data. In the second article, Ree ..read more

This is the latest episode of the free DDW narrated podcast, titled “A look behind the scenes of the drug discovery industry” which covers three written for Volume 23 – Issue 4, Fall 2022 of DDW. They are called: Going paperless – the move to electronic lab notebooks, New horizon for cancer innovation, and A personal touch: the role of bioprinting in drug discovery. In the first article, Barry Bunin, PhD, CEO of Collaborative Drug Discovery explores the rise of electronic lab notebooks and why researchers should be transitioning to digital methods of recording data. In the second article, Ree ..read more

BenevolentAI has announced it will be reducing headcount by around 30% and closing its US office as part of a change of focus in its business priorities. The company says it will focus on its AI-driven drug discovery collaboration and proprietary pipeline, believing these will bring the greatest potential return for shareholders. Work on the Knowledge Exploration Tools will cease, due to the investment needed to fully commercialise this SaaS product and the estimated timeframe to see a potential meaningful financial return. The company hopes these changes will reduce costs by 20%, even after ..read more

Xaira Therapeutics, a joint incubation by ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs, has launched with more than $1 billion of committed capital from lead investors. Xaira is building a platform for drug discovery and development that it hopes will advance multiple drug programmes and unlock biological understanding to inform future discovery. The company was co-founded by Dr David Baker, Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine. It employs a group of researchers who developed the leading models for protein and ..read more

Researchers have discovered that nanoparticles derived from rice bran are both effective and safe for the treatment of cancer. Cancer therapies that employ nanoparticles can specifically target cancer cells, sparing healthy tissue. Recent studies have demonstrated that plant-derived nanoparticles (pdNPs) that have therapeutic effects can be an effective alternative to traditional cancer treatments. However, no pdNPs have been approved as anticancer therapeutic agents to date. Rice bran is a byproduct generated during rice refining processes that has limited utility and low commercial value. H ..read more

Reece Armstrong offers an overview of cell line development and outlines the benefits the technology is bringing to biopharmaceutical developers. Cell line development is an essential underpinning of the drug development process, enabling teams to test, optimise and manufacture therapeutics at a commercial scale. It is a crucial for the development of biopharmaceuticals since they use a living host to produce the therapeutic in question.  The market for cell line development is currently rising due to an increased focus by the life sciences sector on biopharmaceuticals and targeted thera ..read more