Cytotoxicity News and Research

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SEA technology to increase potency of monoclonal antibodies

Seattle Genetics, Inc. announced today the introduction of its sugar engineered antibody (SEA) technology, a novel approach to increasing the potency of monoclonal antibodies through enhanced effector function. The technology will be presented today by Dennis Benjamin, Ph.D., Senior Director, Chemistry, during the Americas Antibody Congress being held in Washington, DC.

23 Sep 2009

Researchers outline the long-term safety of carbon nanotubes in a journal

Italian scientists suggest that we need a much more detailed toxicological approach to hazard assessment before judgement regarding the long-term safety of carbon nanotubes can be made. They outline their results in the International Journal of Environment and Health.

17 Sep 2009

New peptide-based cancer vaccine tested in genital cancer patients

Preventive vaccination against infectious diseases has been a major milestone for the health of modern society. The development of therapeutic vaccination against established diseases is much more difficult. For more than 100 years researchers have already tried to develop cancer vaccines and now first promising clinical results raise hopes. A summary of the most attractive new approaches gave Professor Carmen Scheibenbogen, Institut für Medizinische Immunologie, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, at a press conference in Berlin.

16 Sep 2009

Tobira Therapeutics presents TBR-652 in vitro data for treating HIV at the 49th ICAAC

Tobira Therapeutics Inc., a clinical stage biotechnology company committed to research and product discovery for the treatment of life-threatening and life-altering infectious diseases, today announced results from an in vitro study evaluating TBR-652 in combination with lopinavir (LPV), darunavir (DRV), atazanavir (ATV), tenofovir (TDF), etravirine (ETV), and raltegravir (RAL) using the infectious replicative assay deCIPhR.

14 Sep 2009

UT Southwestern awarded $763,000 as grant to expand studies of Peregrine's anti-PS antibodies

Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: PPHM) today announced that the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded a two-year, $763,000 grant to Philip Thorpe, Ph.D., of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center for research expanding its studies of anti-phosphatidylserine (anti-PS) antibodies as potential treatments for viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) infections.

26 Aug 2009

Nanoparticles show potential as part of new therapy for advanced ovarian cancer

Nanoparticle delivery of diphtheria toxin-encoding DNA selectively expressed in ovarian cancer cells reduced the burden of ovarian tumors in mice, and researchers expect this therapy could be tested in humans within 18 to 24 months, according to a report in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

30 Jul 2009

Peregrine's PS-targeting antibodies highlighted in AACR Annual Meeting studies

Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has reported that two preclinical studies presented during the AACR 100th Annual Meeting 2009 provided further confirmation of the immunomodulatory mechanisms contributing to the anti-tumor activity of its phosphatidylserine (PS) targeting antibodies.

22 Apr 2009

Chemopreventive isothiocyanates selectively depletes mutant p53 in tumor cells

Researchers at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center have demonstrated that naturally-occurring compounds can selectively deplete mutant p53 and restore "wild type" function to p53 in a variety of tumor cells.

20 Apr 2009

Disruption of copper regulation key to prion diseases

An investigation of a rare, inherited form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease suggests that disrupted regulation of copper ions in the brain may be a key factor in this and other prion diseases.

16 Apr 2009

Researchers reveal how immune cells can be harnessed to target melanoma

Researchers at the Babraham Institute and the University of Catanzaro "Magna Graecia", Italy, co-ordinating an international network of scientists and clinicians from Europe, the USA and Japan, have identified new mechanisms through which the immune system recognises and responds to tumours like melanomas.

12 Apr 2009

Monoclonal antibody cancer therapy

The strategy of using monoclonal antibodies for cancer treatment was first described in the late 1970s with the promise that they could be developed into therapies that were highly specific to cancer cells, killing them with few or no side effects.

6 Apr 2009

New high-throughput screening technique makes probing puzzling proteins possible

Understanding the tens of thousands of proteins that compose the human proteome has emerged as a key challenge of this century, and research efforts to date have already enabled major advances in drug discovery and understanding basic biology.

29 Mar 2009

Xencor and CSL Limited establish antibody optimization collaboration

Xencor, Inc., an antibody discovery and development company, announced today that it has entered into an antibody optimization collaboration with CSL, Ltd. The collaboration will provide CSL with access to Xencor's XmAb technology platform to enhance the ADCC effector function of its therapeutic antibodies.

23 Feb 2009

Aching back? cholesterol drug Lovastatin might help

Back pain, a hallmark of degenerative disc disease, sends millions of people to their doctor. In fact, more than 80 percent of patients who undergo spine surgery do so because of disc degeneration.

22 Feb 2009

What are protective effects of anti-ricin A-chain aptamer?

Ricin, a lectin from the castor bean plant Ricinus communis is considered one of the most potent plant toxins.

30 Dec 2008

MedImmune starts phase 2 trial of antibody targeting IL-5 receptor

MedImmune has announced that it has initiated a Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with chronic asthma to determine the safety of subcutaneous dosing of a humanized monoclonal antibody (MAb) that targets the interleukin-5 receptor (IL-5R).

8 Dec 2008

Peregrine Pharmaceuticals awarded U.S. patent for anti-viral applications of phospholipid-targeting antibodies

Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued U.S. Patent Number No. 7,455,833, which includes broad claims covering anti-viral applications of antibodies that directly bind to aminophospholipids.

25 Nov 2008

Panacea Pharmaceuticals issued U.S. patent for anti-HAAH antibodies

Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has announced the issuance of U.S. Patent Number 7,413,737 covering antibodies against human aspartyl (asparaginyl) beta-hydroxylase (HAAH), a proprietary human cancer biomarker and therapeutic target.

3 Sep 2008

Discovery of molecule that kills kidney cancer cells

Kidney cancer patients generally have one option for beating their disease: surgery to remove the organ. But that could change, thanks to a new molecule found by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers that kills kidney cancer cells. Ideally, the researchers said, a drug created from this molecule would help fight the life-threatening disease while leaving patients' kidneys intact.

7 Jul 2008

High-content screening as a universal tool for fingerprinting of vytotoxicity of nanoparticles

As researchers develop an ever-expanding toolkit of nanoparticles for use as drug and imaging agent delivery vehicles, there is a growing need to understand how a given nanoparticle's physical and chemical properties affect biological activity and toxicity.

15 Jun 2008