Researchers at UCI and NCI seek licensing to adopt new applications for a family of far-red to near-infrared emission coumarin-based luciferins (CouLuc) with complementary mutant enzymes.
The use of tumor transcriptomics for precision oncology has made significant advances, mainly by identifying cancer driver genes or actionable mutations for treatment with targeted therapies. However, this strategy misses out on broader genetic interactions that could reveal additional biologically testable biomarkers for therapy response prediction and inform the selection of more effective drugs for targeted treatment.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) seeks licensees for a family of novel furoquinolinedione derivatives that inhibit tyrosyl-DNA phosphodiesterase 2 (TDP2) as cancer therapeutics.
T cell immunotherapy is used in the treatment of various pathologies – including cancers and infections. Current therapies employ chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) consisting of the intracellular fragment of CD3-zeta as the signaling domain with varied combinations of co-stimulatory, transmembrane, spacer/hinge, and extracellular targeting domains. While effective in treating hematological malignancies, CAR T cells need to be activated through T cell receptor (TCR) activation.
CD22 is a protein expressed by normal B cells and B-lymphoid malignancies. Its limited tissue expression pattern makes it a safe antigen for targeted therapies, such as T-cell Receptor (TCR)-T cell therapy. CD22-targeting therapies already on the market, mainly antibody-immunotoxin conjugates and chimeric antigen receptors (CAR)-T cells, have limitations such as resistance to treatment and/or side effects. Resistance mechanisms to the current CD22 therapies involve loss or modulation of target antigen on the cell surface.
Thalidomide and its close analogs (lenalidomide and pomalidomide) are widely used to treat a variety of diseases, such as multiple myeloma and other cancers as well as the symptoms of several inflammatory disorders. However, thalidomide is known for its teratogenic adverse effects when first clinically introduced in the 1950s, and is associated with drowsiness and peripheral neuropathy. Hence, there is intense interest to synthesize, identify and develop safer analogs.
In research settings, visualization of tumors or tumor cells is often done using either bioluminescence or fluorescence. However, both of these methods have shortcomings: bioluminescence is not sensitive enough to sort individual tumor cells, and fluorescence cannot be used effectively to view internal tumors and is best used with surface tumors.
Hyperpolarized magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an emerging molecular imaging method for metabolic imaging for detecting cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and traumatic brain injury and monitoring therapy with no Gadolinium or Iron.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) seeks research co-development partners and/or licensees to develop a collection of anti-CE1 antibodies for liver cancer treatment.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) seeks licensees for a CRISPR/Cas9-engineered MC38 B2m knockout murine colon cancer cell line that models tumor resistance to PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint blockade caused by loss of MHC-I antigen presentation. This research tool provides an opportunity to study checkpoint-refractory tumors and evaluate alternative or combination immunotherapy strategies for cancers that evade conventional T-cell–mediated recognition.