The Bio Report

Turning Natural Killers into Off-the-Shelf Therapies for Autoimmune Disease

NK cells, part of the innate immune system, serve as the body’s first line of defense. These cells can recognize and kill abnormal or infected cells. As therapies, they have the advantage over CAR-T and other cell therapies because they can be used off-the-shelf without undergoing gene editing or other genetic modifications. They also don’t trigger cytokine storms, a common reaction to CAR-T therapies that can cause a systemic inflammatory response that can range from flu-like symptoms to life-threatening complications. The greater safety and lower costs of these NK cell therapies open the door to broader uses beyond cancer to include autoimmune diseases. We spoke to Fred Aslan, president and CEO of Artiva Biotherapeutics, about the company’s off-the-shelf NK cell therapies, the case for pairing them with monoclonal antibodies, and how they can broaden the uses for cell therapies.

Combining an Antibody and siRNA to Treat Hepatitis B

More than a decade after the approval of a curative therapy for hepatitis C, hepatitis B has proven more challenging to tackle. Vir Biotechnology, in collaboration with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, is developing a promising combination approach that marries Vir’s monoclonal antibody tobivibart with Alnylam’s siRNA elebsiran. We spoke to Mark Eisner, chief medical officer of Vir, about hepatitis B, the company’s combination therapy in development with Alnylam, and its platform technologies for developing treatments for infectious disease and oncology.

Looking at the Promise of GLP-1 Agonists Beyond Obesity

While GLP-1 agonists have been all the rage in treating obesity, Coya Therapeutics sees potential for these therapies to address inflammatory diseases. In fact, Coya is developing its low-dose interleukin 2 in combination with several different agents. The belief is that its approach will address inflammation by targeting dysfunctional regulatory T cells. The company is pursuing multiple neurodegenerative conditions, as well as autoimmune and metabolic diseases. We spoke to Arun Swaminathan, CEO of Coya Therapeutics, about its pipeline-in-a-product strategy to treat neurodegenerative and other inflammatory diseases, its pursuit of a GLP-1 combination therapy for these conditions, and the challenges of being a newly minted public company in the current financial environment.

An Off-the-Shelf Cancer Vaccine Faces a Final Clinical Hurdle in NSCLC

Though cancer vaccines have been an area of great promise, in practice they have faced several challenges because of the heterogeneity of tumors, the ability of the tumor microenvironment to suppress the immune system, and the challenges of producing a strong and sustained T-cell response. OSE Immunotherapeutics’ off-the-shelf cancer vaccine Tedopi has shown promising results in a phase 3 study in patients with non-small cell lung cancer and the company is now conducting a confirmatory phase 3 study. We spoke to Nicolas Poirier, CEO of OSE Immunotherapeutics, about the company’s off-the-shelf cancer vaccine, non-small cell lung cancer, and how it is leveraging its immune system expertise through partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies.

A Nose for Attacking Brain Cancer

One of the challenges in treating brain cancer and other diseases of the central nervous system is delivering therapeutics beyond the blood-brain barrier. NeOnc Technologies using a natural compound derived from essential oils in plants that not only can kill cancer cells, but can cross the blood-brain barrier. What’s more, it can transport other therapies as well. We spoke to Thomas Chen, founder and CEO of NeOnc, about brain cancer, how the blood-brain barrier complicates the delivery of therapies to treat the condition, and how its experimental candidate that is delivered intranasally works.

An Unnatural Approach to Undruggable Targets

Some 70 percent of potential therapeutic targets are believed to be beyond the reach of conventional small molecule therapies or biologics. Macrocyclic peptides offer a way to get at elusive targets while providing desirable characteristics of both small molecule drugs and biologics. They offer oral bioavailability, can permeate cells, and engage complex targets with specificity. Unnatural Products is harnessing AI to create synthetic macrocyclic peptides to pursue previously undruggable targets. We spoke to Cameron Pye, CEO and co-founder of Unnatural Products, about how these peptides can target proteins that traditional therapies cannot reach, the engineering process for the company’s synthetic macrocyclic peptides, and their potential to lead to new innovative therapies for a range of conditions from cancer to obesity.

Expanding the Drug Developer’s Chemical Universe

Through the creation of a chemical programming language, Chemify said it has been able to expand the chemical space it can explore. Chemify is combining this unique programming language with robotics and AI to digitize chemistry. The company, though, has much grander ambitions than being a drug developer. It wants to be the infrastructure for the industry. We spoke to Lee Cronin, founder and CEO of Chemify, about the company’s platform technology for digitizing chemistry, how its chemical programming language expands the chemical space it can explore, and how the integration of robotics into its platform accelerates drug discovery.

Take 100 Megabytes a Day and Call Me in the Morning

Prescription digital therapies, the use of software to treat disease, are growing in number. Already there have been 140 prescription digital therapies that have been granted market access through national regulatory and reimbursement pathways. That represents a five-fold increase in the since 2021, according to the IQVIA Digital Health Trends 2024 report. We spoke to Murray Aitken, executive director of the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, about the report, why digital health companies faced challenging times in recent years, and why your next prescription may be in the form of an app.