The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Replay announced that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a ‘safe to proceed’ for the Investigational New Drug (IND) application for PRAME TCR/IL-15 NK (SY-307), an engineered T cell receptor natural killer (TCR NK) cell therapy for relapsed/refractory myeloid malignancies. MD Anderson is the IND sponsor.   PRAME TCR/IL-15 NK (SY-307) is being developed by Syena, an oncology-focused product company launched by Replay and MD Anderson based on the...

Rare cancers are difficult to study in a clinical trial setting due to the relatively small number of patients. Two studies recently published in The Lancet Oncology examined the use of cabozantinib, an antiangiogenic multi-tyrosine kinase inhibitor, on two rare cancers: adrenocortical carcinoma, an endocrine cancer, and metastatic phaeochromocytomas and paragangliomas (MPPGs), both neuroendocrine tumors. Notably, these two cancers have just one FDA approved treatment each. The studies highlight the therapeutic potential of cabozantinib in combination with other therapies...

One of the most frequently mutated epigenetic factors in cancer is a large protein complex called SWI/SNF, which regulates gene transcription and is crucial for proper cell differentiation. An important question has been how SWI/SNF is recruited to cell-type-specific regions of DNA, called enhancers. Researchers led by Blaine Bartholomew, Ph.D., found a special class of non-coding enhancer RNA (eRNA) that recruits SWI/SNF to cell-type specific enhancers involved in the switch from undifferentiated to differentiated cells. By...

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously aggressive and difficult to treat, underscoring the need for more effective therapeutic targets. Research led by Jie Fu, Ph.D., Jianhua Ling, Ph.D., and Paul Chiao, Ph.D., previously showed that apoptosis, or cell death, resistance in KRAS G12D-mutant pancreatic cancer was accelerated by deleting the Plk3 tumor suppressor, but the regulatory mechanism of Plk3 activation remains unknown.   To provide further insights, the researchers examined the role of Plk3 in KRAS G12D-mutant pancreatic cancer models. They...