When we started our series, “Combination Cancer Immunotherapy — A Virtual Roundtable,” in 2014, our basic assumptions were not the consensus view. We assumed immunotherapy, now more commonly called immuno-oncology (IO), would become the dominant form of cancer treatment and central target of academic and industry research in oncology. We assumed a single, backbone therapy would become the pillar around which combinations of therapeutics with complementary targets would form. And we assumed the IO field, especially in its combination approaches, would pose profound scientific and business challenges as it took over as the central focus of oncology in general. Our assumptions turned out to be correct. Now, all IO has to do is catch up with itself.
Frequency Therapeutics is an early-stage developer of small molecule drugs to activate “progenitor cells” and restore healthy tissue. Its lead program is in treating hearing loss by regenerating sensory cells in the inner ear, for which it is planning a Phase 1 trial to launch in mid-2018.
Takeda’s chief medical and scientific officer talks about R&D, business development, and partnering.
We continue the story of Geert Cauwenbergh whose nearly 40 years in the industry included work with Paul Janssen as well as being a startup entrepreneur with RXi Pharmaceuticals.
To heal the wounds — maintaining and restoring cellular homeostasis with novel secretomes.
Orlando, the city of warmth and happiness by design, hosted the Endocrine Society’s annual ENDO event this year, overlapping the Washington, DC-hosted AACR, the yearly confab by the American Association for Cancer Research, by several days. I was determined to visit both shows.
Geert Cauwenbergh now can look back at his almost four decades in the industry — from his formative years working with Paul Janssen building a small company into a global phenomenon, to his later years as a startup entrepreneur with RXi — and reflect on how most of it has turned upon a snap decision.
An anti-infective immunotherapy developer on a mission to replace antibiotics with engineered antibodies and novel mechanisms.
In Phase 3 with an innovatively delivered drug to treat a deadly complication of ruptured brain aneurysm.
Board Chairman & CEO Gabriel Baertschi talks about why the private, European-based company is widening its base with new approaches and technologies for treating pain and, now, related conditions.
At BIO CEO many of the companies on my radar this year are in the metabolic/endocrinology area, over which diabetes has long reigned. But the area is now expanding noticeably into other spheres such as neurodegeneration and cardiovascular. As Albion Fitzgerald, chairman of CohBar, says “During the next 15 years, there will be five times as many deaths from noncommunicable diseases as from the old historic communicable diseases, and most noncommunicable diseases are metabolic diseases.”
There is no grand plan for a whole year of Companies to Watch (CtW). Each month, a single candidate makes the cut for a single column. Nevertheless, patterns emerge among the CtWs as the year progresses and come into focus as it ends.
Why shouldn’t our mitochondria want us to live long, prospering in good health? Why shouldn’t they — as symbiotic microbes turned cellular organelles with their own mini-genomes — carry genes that help ensure our healthful survival?
At the JPM conference, I spend the bulk of my time meeting with a string of companies, but as various as they are, they all share the common challenge of risk and uncertainty in the development of human therapeutics. For us in the press, it can be tempting to toss companies into easy categories such as size, stage of research, market cap - but then, it’s fun and interesting to let the patterns among the companies emerge spontaneously as each one falls into context. The following describes just a couple of examples.
