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Corner Therapeutics Wants Vaccines to Offer Better Protection for Longer
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By Brian Gormley, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Immunotherapy startup Corner Therapeutics, which recently raised $54 million in venture financing, is getting ready to test technology on humans that may help vaccines provide stronger and longer-lasting protection against seasonal flu and other ailments.
Historically, vaccines have been designed to stimulate production of antibodies. But Corner, harnessing new understanding of the immune system, also seeks to trigger production of T cells, which would give vaccines an added boost and help them provide short- and long-term protection, said Corner co-founder and President Jonathan Kagan.
Corner aims to do this by stimulating dendritic cells, which are the body’s T-cells engineers, said Dr. Steven Altschuler, co-founder and chief executive of the company, as well as managing director of healthcare ventures for Ziff Capital Partners, which led the recent financing.
Early next year, Watertown, Mass.-based Corner expects to enter clinical trials to see if it can make seasonal flu vaccines more effective by stimulating production of T cells as well as antibodies. The company, which also wants to apply its approach to cancer, has received grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to target infectious diseases such as HIV, influenza and Covid-19.
“The goal is to reimagine the way one can use the immune system to keep us healthy,” Kagan said.
And now on to the news...
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Boston Children’s Hospital led an effort to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to allow the hospital to administer a drug that it created specifically for one patient, Mila, Julia Vitarello’s daughter. PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
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Rare disease treatment. Startup EveryONE Medicines seeks to develop drugs designed for individual children who have rare, life-threatening neurological diseases.
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Boston-based EveryONE has raised seed financing from Khosla Ventures, GV and Third Rock Ventures to create drugs to treat patients who harbor specific genetic mutations. Its approach breaks from conventional drug development, in which companies spend years testing a medicine in lab and clinical studies.
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Some diseases are so rare that the conventional approach won’t work because researchers wouldn’t be able to recruit enough patients into clinical trials. EveryONE is working with regulators to create a path for genetic medicines to be developed for individual patients. Biotech companies taking a similar approach include Creyon Bio, which seeks to develop treatments for rare and common diseases.
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Advances in fields such as DNA sequencing, genetic medicines and digital health make EveryONE’s approach feasible, said Nessan Bermingham, interim chief executive of EveryONE and a Khosla operating partner.
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$2.8 Billion
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The fourth-quarter revenue of biotechnology company Moderna, which has formed a new collaboration with OpenAI.
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At Moderna, OpenAI’s GPTs Are Changing Almost Everything
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Moderna disclosed a partnership Wednesday with artificial-intelligence heavyweight OpenAI, a deal that aims to automate nearly every business process at the biotechnology company and boost the ChatGPT maker’s reach into the enterprise, The Wall Street Journal reports. As part of the transaction, some 3,000 Moderna employees will have access to ChatGPT Enterprise, built on OpenAI’s most advanced language model, GPT-4, by the end of this week. Further integration of AI into more of its processes could help Moderna outpace its plan to roll out 15 new products within the next five years, the Cambridge, Mass., company said.
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The True Cost of Megamergers in Healthcare: Higher Prices
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Prices for surgery, intensive care and emergency-room visits rise after hospital mergers. The increases come out of your pay, WSJ reports. Hospitals have struck deals in recent years to form local and regional health systems that use their reach to bargain for higher prices from insurers. Employers have often passed the higher rates onto employees. Such price increases added $204 million to national health spending, on average, in the first year after a merger of nearby hospitals, according to a study to be published Wednesday by American Economic Review: Insights.
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People
Solid tumor treatment developer Actym Therapeutics appointed Thomas Smart to the post of chief executive officer. He previously founded and served as CEO of Gravitas Therapeutics.
Exits
Wilmington, Del.-based biopharmaceutical company Incyte agreed to acquire Escient Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego startup developing novel therapeutics for neurosensory-inflammatory disorders, for $750 million. The deal is expected to close by the third quarter.
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Endeavor BioMedicines, a San Diego-based biotechnology startup, scored $132.5 million in Series C financing, including the conversion of a $5 million convertible instrument. AyurMaya, an affiliate of Matrix Capital Management, led the round. Endeavor will use the new funds to advance clinical development of its lead candidate for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and progressive pulmonary fibrosis, in addition to its antibody-drug conjugate for the treatment of HER3-positive solid tumors.
SynOx Therapeutics, a Dublin- and U.K.-based startup developing a treatment for a type of tumor that affects the soft tissue lining of joints and tendons, completed a $75 million Series B round from Forbion and others.
Rubedo Life Sciences, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical startup planning to conduct Phase 1 studies of its drug candidate in chronic atopic dermatitis and chronic psoriasis later this year, closed a $40 million Series A round from investors including Khosla Ventures.
AtaCor Medical, a San Clemente, Calif.-based medical device company focusing on cardiac rhythm management, raised $28 million in Series C funding led by Arboretum Ventures.
Alaffia Health, a New York-based provider of generative AI tools for health plan claim operations, landed $10 million in Series A funding. FirstMark Capital led the round, with Amish Jani joining the company’s board.
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National settlements are slated to pay more than $50 billion over many years, but some projects likely aren’t eligible for funding. PHOTO: JON CHERRY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Grandmother becomes second patient to receive kidney from gene-edited pig (New York Times)
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A spending frenzy on obesity drugs (STAT)
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Deconstructing the diligence process: an approach to vetting new product theses (Life Sci VC)
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Biotech landlord Alexandria on research clusters and the sector’s recovery (Biopharma Dive)
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