TechBio Latest News & Updates ⚜️
✴️ Lantern Pharma Inc, ✳️ Healx Ltd, 💠 Rejuvenate Biomed NV and 🔷 Evotec SE
“Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. HORACE WALPOLE”.
By Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence
🔳 Latest News 🔲
Lantern Pharma Announces Positive Clinical Update from Ongoing Phase 2 HARMONIC™ Clinical Trial for Never Smokers with Advanced NSCLC, Including an 86% Clinical Benefit Rate in the Initial Patient Cohort
Rejuvenate Biomed and SAS tap AI to develop disease-agnostic drug repurposing discovery tools
Healx, an AI-enabled drug discovery platform for rare diseases, raises $47M
SynaptixBio Ltd and Evotec SE expand collaboration
Evotec and Pfizer Collaborate to Advance Drug Discovery in France
Evotec (NASDAQ:EVO) Stock Rating Lowered by Morgan Stanley
Is Generative AI in Drug Discovery Overhyped?
✴️ Lantern Pharma Inc
Lantern Pharma Inc (2013, Texas US) (NASDAQ LTRN), is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company using its proprietary RADR®, an AI and ML platform, to transform the cost and timeline of oncology drug discovery and development. RADR® (or Response Algorithm for Drug Positioning & Rescue) is a proprietary integrated data analytics, experimental biology, biotechnology and ML-based platform, used primarily to predict the potential response the patients will have to new drugs that the company is developing/repurposing.
Lantern has a very active oncology pipeline with lead programs (LP-300, LP-284, LP-184, ADC), with collaborations (Elraglusib/Actuate Therapeutics, TTC-352/TTC Oncology, XCE853/Oregon Therapeutics, ADC/Bielefeld University) and a subsidiary of Lantern Pharma Starlight Therapeutics focused on CNS & Brain Cancers (STAR-001). Let's take a look:
The Harmonic™ Clinical Trial is enrolling participants in a Phase 2 multi-center study to evaluate the investigational new drug called LP-300, in combination with carboplatin and pemetrexed in never smoker patients with relapsed advanced primary adenocarcinoma of the lung after treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors. LP-300 was advanced with the use of AI by Lantern Pharma after they acquired the rights from BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals, Inc and paid in 2018 for $25,000 upfront plus royalty commitments (Lantern files for IPO to study 5-time phase 3 cancer failure). LP-300 is a dithio-containing drug candidate that interferes with the activity of cancer promoting proteins by modifying cysteine residues and creating adducts and is intended to work together with chemotherapy to strongly interact with cancer-promoting proteins including TRX/GRX and tyrosine kinases.
🚨 On April 22, 2024, Lantern Received Regulatory Approval to Expand Harmonic™ Clinical Trial into Japan and Taiwan.
🚨 Just this week (August 05, 2024), Lantern Pharma Announced Positive Clinical Update from Ongoing Phase 2 HARMONIC™ Clinical Trial for Never Smokers with Advanced NSCLC, Including an 86% Clinical Benefit Rate in the Initial Patient Cohort.
The Phase 2 Harmonic™ study is designed for never smokers with lung adenocarcinoma with the objective to overcome driver mutation(s), which are more common in never smokers, that lead to tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment resistance, and to enhance patient outcomes when LP-300 is used with the standard-of-care chemotherapy doublet.
Results showed that 6 patients (out of seven) experienced clinical benefit from the combination of LP-300 and chemotherapy, while 1 patient experienced progressive disease. The clinical benefit rate and disease control rate is 86% for this group with an objective response rate of 43%.
Of these 6 patients experiencing clinical benefit: 3 patients showed partial responses with an average tumor size reduction of 51% and 3 patients have stable disease with an average tumor size reduction of 13%.
A preliminary analysis of data in the safety lead-in part of the trial indicated no additional safety concerns with no observed dose limiting toxicities and no reported treatment related serious adverse events.
In June 2023, Lantern Pharma received FDA clearance of IND Application for the drug candidate LP-184 in solid tumors. On September 26, 2023, Lantern dosed its first patient in a phase I trial of its drug LP-184 to treat advanced solid tumors.
On October 3, 2023, Lantern announced that the in vivo data highlighting the enhanced efficacy of its drug candidate LP-184 in glioblastoma were published in Clinical Cancer Research. LP-184 is a small molecule with favorable CNS penetration, that utilizes the mechanism of action known as synthetic lethality, to exploit common vulnerabilities in solid tumor and CNS cancers with DNA damage repair deficiencies. In addition, Lantern’s AI platform, RADR, has highlighted overlapping gene dependency profiles between glioblastoma tumorigenesis and sensitivity to LP-184, such as EGFR activation pathways.
In February 2023, Lantern and TTC oncology—an emerging biotechnology company founded in 2015—Established an AI Collaboration to Expand the Clinical Development of Drug Candidate TTC-352. Phase 2 ready candidate, TTC-352, is a 🆕 selective human estrogen receptor partial agonist for the treatment of patients with metastatic estrogen receptor positive breast cancer.
🚨 On March 15, 2024, Lantern announced the dosing of the first two patients in the Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating Lantern’s investigational new drug LP-284 (a potent DNA alkylating agent that kills solid tumors) in patients with relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and other high-grade B-cell lymphomas as well as other select solid tumors and sarcomas.
🚨 On June 12, 2024, Lantern announced that the Japan Patent Office has issued a Certificate of Patent for patent application no. 2021-513267 / registration no. 7489966 directed to Lantern Pharma’s drug candidate LP-284 ((+)N-hydroxy-N-(methylacylfulvene)urea).
🚨 On May 6, 2024, Lantern Pharma has entered into a partnership with Oregon Therapeutics for optimizing the development of the cancer drug candidate, XCE853, through an AI-driven approach. XCE853 is novel protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) inhibitor. PDIs are protein chaperones and are central to maintaining cancer cell metabolism, additionally PDI inhibitors can cause cancer cell death through the accumulation of impaired proteins and dysregulated cellular stress responses.
Finally, on August 01, 2024, Lantern announced that it will host its second quarter 2024 operating and financial results webcast on Thursday, August 8, 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time / 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time (Lantern Pharma to Report Second Quarter 2024 Operating & Financial Results on August 8th, 2024 at 4:30 p.m. ET).
Panna Sharma, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lantern Pharma, will lead the call:👉 please sign up at the Zoom webcast link provided in the link: Lantern Pharma Q2, 2024 earnings Zoom webcast registration link.
Lantern Pharma has raised approximately $100M.
For more:
✳️ Healx Ltd
Healx (Cambridge UK, 2014) utilizes AI to match existing drugs with rare diseases. In particular, their AI platform Healnet utilizes NL processing to extract disease knowledge from published sources and to complement biomedical databases and proprietary curated data. Healx’s data is integrated in the form of the largest, rare disease-focused Knowledge Graph, that shows prioritized hidden and novel connections between drugs and diseases.
The platform uses multi-omics signature reversal and AI to identify novel therapeutic hits. By using Healx lab-generated phenotypic and transcriptomics profiling data, novel disease biology, mechanisms and targets are identified, which enables the design of second-generation compounds using virtual screening, predictive modeling and phenomics For example, Lig3DLens is a 3D virtual screening tool box, to identify novel drug applications in the area of rare disorders.
Let's move now to Healx’s collaborations and pipeline news
In 2021, Healx began a clinical trial on a repositioned drug (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) for Fragile X Syndrome. For more about drug repurposing:
On August 5, 2021, it was announced that Healx will work with Ono Pharmaceutical Co Ltd (TYO: 4528), one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Japan, to find multiple new therapeutic indications for Ono’s proprietary assets.
On February 08, 2022, Ovid Therapeutics and Healx announced that Healx has secured from Ovid Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ: OVID) an exclusive option to license rights to develop and commercialize gaboxadol, as part of a potential combination therapy (with HLX-0201, that has been identified by the company’s proprietary AI platform, Healnet) for Fragile X syndrome, as well as a treatment for other indications.
On September 07, 2023, the FDA awarded orphan drug designation to Healx’s small molecule HLX-1502 for the treatment of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a genetic condition that causes tumors to grow along the nerves.
🚨 On April 11 2024, Healx announced that it has signed an investment agreement with its long-term partner, Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF), to support the advance of Healx’s AI-powered neurofibromatosis programme including its lead candidate, HLX-1502, which is on course to enter a Phase 2 clinical trial in the coming months.
🚨 On August 2, 2024, Healx has secured the FDA clearance for IND to commence a Phase II clinical trial of HLX-1502, targeting adults with neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) and inoperable plexiform neurofibroma.
🚨 Moreover, Healx just raised $47M in a Series C round of funding co-led by Europe’s Atomico and Silicon Valley-based R42.
DrugBank, one of Canada’s fastest growing health tech companies that provides data solutions for healthcare companies working in precision medicine, drug discovery, drug repurposing and clinical software applications, offers structured clinical and scientific data to pharma companies such as Healx. DrugBank is part of Amii, a national AI institute part of Roche’s AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Canada.
Healx has raised approximately $115M to date.
💠 Rejuvenate Biomed NV
Rejuvenate Biomed (2017, Belgium) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing therapeutics that target the root causes of age-related diseases. Utilizing two clinically validated proprietary drug discovery platforms, the AI-enabled in silico CombinAge and the in vivo CelegAge, Rejuvenate Biomed has built a pipeline of five unique combination drugs targeting different age-related diseases, including neuromuscular, musculoskeletal, metabolic, cardiovascular, nephrological, and neurodegenerative indications.
The company was founded by Ann Beliën, PhD, after nearly two decades of experience with Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. Since then, she has built a team of fourteen well-experienced drug development experts, enthusiastically engaged to make a difference in the longevity field. Rejuvenate Biomed's team has made exceptional progress by maturing the business to a clinical-stage company. Right now, Rejuvenate Biomed is working on the following assets in its drug development pipeline:
Lead: RJx-01 currently in clinical Phase 1b for sarcopenia,
RJx-01 is a proprietary combination drug (synergistic effect of 2 small molecules), patent protected for multiple indications with established human safety profile and effective in preclinical models
In this successful Phase 1b trial in disuse-induced muscle atrophy, RJx-01 met all primary and secondary endpoints. RJx-01 was generally safe and well tolerated with no reported treatment-related serious or severe adverse events. The proprietary and innovative RJx-01 formulation exhibited excellent bioavailability.
RJx-02, RJx-03, RJx-04 and RJx-05 not disclosed.
🚨 On August 01, 2024, Rejuvenate Biomed and SAS announced a partnership to develop a user-friendly drug repurposing discovery tool (on SAS Viya a powerful cloud-native AI and data platform) for researchers and scientists to uncover medically relevant insights about drugs, diseases, and biological networks, through fast and systematic explorations of hidden biological patterns. The partnership will unite Rejuvenate's clinically validated AI-driven drug discovery platform with SAS' decades of AI expertise (Rejuvenate Biomed and SAS tap AI to develop disease-agnostic drug repurposing discovery tools).
Rejuvenate Biomed has raised a total funding of $22M over 2 rounds from 3 investors.
For more about longevity (Aging Intervention Foundation, Longevity and TechBio):
🔷 Evotec SE
Evotec SE (ETR: EVT) is a global biotechnology company committed to advancing drug discovery and development with a premium data analysis (SaaS) platform, Evotec’s PanHunter (a multi-omics data analysis platform), that is a web-based platform that combines peer-reviewed statistical analysis algorithms with the potential for ML and AI capabilities. By working with a user-friendly graphical interface, it enables in-depth analysis across multi-omics data sets with a flexibility that can address just a few entries or correlate millions of data points with ease. They also have a proprietary molecular patient database (E.MPD, Evotec‘s Molecular Patient Database) with over 15k samples and the PanOmics platform with over 200k samples (multi-omics data generation at an industrialized scale).
Evotec SE (headquartered in Hamburg, Germany) was established as Evotec BioSystems GmbH in 1993 (by a group of founders that included Karsten Henco, Ulrich Aldag, Freimut Leidenberger, Heinrich Schulte, Rudolf Rigler, Charles Weissmann and Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen) and develops drug discovery programs and assets, both internally or through academic collaborations (Anti-Infectives, Cardiovascular Disease, Neuroscience & Pain, Metabolic, Immunology & Inflammation, Oncology, Other). Their most advanced programs are:
Neuroscience & Pain
CNTX 6016 Pain (CB2) in collaboration with Centrexion in Phase I
CNTX-6016 is under development for the treatment of neuropathic pain, and acts by targeting the cannabinoid receptor 2.
EVT8683/BMS986419 Neurodegeneration (elF2b) in collaboration with BMS in Phase I
A program, EVT8683, was in-licensed by Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) in September 2021 as BMS-986419. Following a successful Phase I study Bristol Myers Squibb announced that a Phase II study for BMS-986419 is scheduled to commence in 2024. In March 2023, Bristol Myers Squibb and Evotec extended and expanded this partnership for an additional 8 years.
Metabolic
BAY3401016 Alport Syndrome (Sema3A) in collaboration with Bayer (ETR: BAYN) in Phase I
On June 29, 2023, Evotec announced that it received a €2M milestone payment from Bayer AG, which is triggered by the first patient dosed in the clinical Phase I study of a kidney disease programme stemming from the Evotec-Bayer multi-target research collaboration in kidney diseases. The drug candidate, a monoclonal antibody targeting the protein Semaphorin-3A (“Sema3A”) is being developed as a potential first-to-market treatment for Alport syndrome, a rare genetic kidney disease.
Immunology & Inflammation
TPM502 Celiac Disease in collaboration with Topas Therapeutics in Phase II
On May 25, 2023, Topas Therapeutics, a clinical stage biotech company developing novel antigen-specific immune tolerance therapies to treat autoimmune disorders, announced the launch of a Phase 2a clinical study (NCT05660109) evaluating the safety, tolerability and pharmacodynamics of TPM502 in patients with celiac disease.
TPM203 Pemphigus Vulgaris in collaboration with Topas Therapeutics in Phase I
On December 18, 2019, Evotec spin-off Topas Therapeutics GmbH, a Hamburg, Germany-based private platform company leveraging the natural tolerance induction capabilities of the liver, announced that the first patient has been enrolled in a first-in-human Phase 1 trial evaluating TPM203 in patients with pemphigus vulgaris, an orphan autoimmune disease.
EVT401 Immunology & Inflammation (P2X7) in collaboration with CONBA Group in Phase I
On May 02, 2012, Evotec announced the grant of a development and marketing license on EVT 401, a selective, small molecule P2X7 antagonist, for human indications with exception of ophthalmological, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and endometriosis in China.
Oncology
CT7001 (CDK7) in collaboration with Carrick in Phase II
On October 18, 2023, Carrick Therapeutics, an oncology-focused biopharmaceutical company, announced that the first patient has been dosed in its Phase 2 clinical trial evaluating the novel combination of Carrick's samuraciclib (CT7001), an oral and first-in-class inhibitor of CDK7, and the Menarini Group's oral selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD), elacestrant, in patients with CDK4/6i resistant HR+, HER2- metastatic breast cancer.
AV078 Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (mTORC1) in collaboration with Aeovian Pharmaceuticals in Phase II
AV078 is a central nervous system-penetrant selective mTORC1 inhibitor in development for tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) epilepsy.
In March 2024, Hevolution Foundation announced an investment of $20M as the lead investor for a $50 million Series A financing extension in Aeovian Pharmaceuticals, to help Berkeley, CA-based Aeovian advance its innovative platform of selective mTORC1 inhibitors, and hopefully foster several promising therapies for diseases of aging.
IMT-009 (CD161) in collaboration with Immunitas in Phase I
On April 8, 2024, Immunitas Therapeutics, a clinical stage precision immunotherapy company, presented preclinical data supporting the combination potential of IMT-009 with anti-PD1 immunotherapy at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting (AACR 2024) in San Diego, California.
IMT-009 is a fully human, Fc-attenuated IgG1 monoclonal antibody that binds to CD161 and blocks its interaction with its ligand, CLEC2D.
IMT-009 is under evaluation in a Phase 1/2a clinical trial for use as a monotherapy and combination treatment for solid tumor and hematological malignancies.
EVT801 (VEGF3) in collaboration with Kazia Therapeutics in Phase I
On May 1, 2024, Kazia Therapeutics Limited (NASDAQ: KZIA), a biotechnology company specializing in oncology, announced that the Safety Review Team of the EVT801 Phase 1 clinical trial has concluded that the primary and secondary objectives of stage 1 of the trial have successfully been met (Evotec partner Kazia reports the successful completion of the EVT801 Phase 1 clinical trial in advanced cancer patients).
Moreover, at Evotec they have the following collaborations:
In January 2014, Owkin and Evotec (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, MDAX/TecDAX, ISIN: DE0005664809; NASDAQ: EVO) entered into an AI-powered strategic partnership in oncology, immunology and inflammation.
On April 30, 2024, Evotec and Bayer (ETR: BAYN) announced that they have updated the focus of their strategic collaboration to developing innovative precision treatments for cardiovascular diseases (Bayer and Evotec collaborate to advance precision cardiology).
In May 2024, Evotec exited gene therapy, closing Austria R&D plant. On May 28, 2024, Evotec SE has announced the extension of its 20-year collaboration with CHDI Foundation, Inc, a privately funded nonprofit biomedical research organisation exclusively dedicated to collaboratively developing therapeutics that will substantially improve the lives of those affected by Huntington’s disease (Evotec and CHDI Foundation extend strategic drug discovery collaboration in Huntington’s disease).
On June 03, 2024, Evotec and QIAGEN (NYSE: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) announced a collaboration to leverage QIAGEN’s OmicSoft Land Databases through Evotec’s PanOmics data access and analysis platform PanHunter. Combining comprehensive data sets with advanced analytics capabilities will enable enhanced multi-omics data insights, better disease understanding and more precise therapeutic interventions (Evotec and QIAGEN enter software collaboration for enhanced multi-omics data insights). On 12 June 12, 2024, Evotec announced that has reached important scientific progress within its neuroscience collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) triggering a research payment of $20M to Evotec (Evotec announces progress in neuroscience collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb).
On July 8, 2024, Evotec announced that its biologics segment, Just – Evotec Biologics, Inc., has expanded its strategic partnership with Sandoz (SWX: SDZ) (Just – Evotec Biologics expands tech partnership for biosimilars with Sandoz).
On July 10, 2024, Evotec announced it has entered into a multi-year master research collaboration and option and license agreement with Pfizer. Under the agreement, Evotec and Pfizer (ETR: PFE) will initially focus on early discovery research for metabolic and infectious diseases (Evotec and Pfizer collaborate to advance drug discovery in France). At the end of July 2024, SynaptixBio announced the expansion of its collaboration with Evotec, which began in April 2022, for the purpose of expanding the pipeline with additional drug candidates for the treatment of hypomyelination with atrophy of the basal ganglia and cerebellum, also called H-ABC (SynaptixBio Ltd and Evotec SE expand collaboration).
Finally, on August 03, 2024, Simply Wall St simply said that: