Scientists at the University College London (UCL) have made a major breakthrough that may further cement so-called immunotherapies’ status as the most promising advance in cancer treatments in years. The researchers published their findings in the journal Science.
Cancer drug developer Exelixis continued its comeback, announcing Monday a deal with Ipsen that will pay the South San Francisco, CA-based biotech $200 million upfront.
Ipsen, of Paris, will receive rights to the Exelixis drug cabozantinib (Cometriq) around the world except in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. Ipsen will also pay Exelixis $60 million if cabozantinib is approved by European regulators for advanced renal cell carcinoma, a type of kidney cancer, and $50 million if approved in Europe for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, or liver cancer.
In after-hours trading, Exelixis (NASDAQ: EXEL) shares are up 12 percent to $4.09.
According to the Japan Times, the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), along with Kyocera Corp., NEC Corp., Sumitomo Seika Chemicals Co., Osaka University and a precision equipment maker in Switzerland, are working on a sensor that, when attached to a smartphone, could detect cancer from human breath.
When President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative last year ears perked up at Seven Bridges Genomics, one of a number of startups that helps researchers store, analyze, and interpret huge amounts of genomic data. The announcement meant more large-scale genomic data projects were on the way for the Cambridge, MA-based startup to fight for. And a $45 million Series A round that the company is revealing today will help Seven Bridges compete for that work.
There’s more than one way to suppress a gene – and a new discovery by Technion scientists could lead to a revolutionary new method of regulating genetic activity.
In a study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, assistant professor Roee Amit, a faculty member at Technion’s Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, along with colleagues, described a mechanism in which a protein can intervene physically between a gene and a factor attempting to activate it.
Three weeks ago the world’s biggest genomic sequencing company, Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN), unveiled a spinout called Grail to make blood tests that could spot all kinds of cancer in seemingly healthy people, perhaps as soon as 2019.
If you know anything about the history of screening healthy people for cancer, you’re right to be skeptical.
The people behind Grail can sympathize. “I was the in-house skeptic,” says Rick Klausner, Illumina’s chief medical officer since 2013. “I told Illumina, ‘Don’t go near it.'”
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality among both men and women in the US, and yet the disease is rarely diagnosed early. Now, a new Israeli study proposes that screening smokers admitted to the hospital with pneumonia could facilitate the early diagnosis of lung cancer and thereby save – or prolong – many lives.
The world’s largest DNA sequencing company says it will form a new company to develop blood tests that cost $1,000 or less and can detect many types of cancer before symptoms arise.
Illumina, based in San Diego, said its blood tests should reach the market by 2019, and would be offered through doctors’ offices or possibly a network of testing centers.
The spin-off’s name, Grail, reflects surging expectations around new types of DNA tests that might do more to defeat cancer than the more than $90 billion spent each year by doctors and hospitals on cancer drugs. Illumina CEO Jay Flatley says he hopes the tests could be a “turning point in the war on cancer.”
We have known for some time that cancer is not a static, monolithic disease. Instead, we now think of cancer as heterogeneous. Each patient’s cancer may arise from widely dissimilar origins, even in patients with the same type of tumor.
