The hype of ma­chine learn­ing has man­aged to bag se­ri­ous cash from in­vestors over the past year, and the lat­est biotech to en­ter the for­ay is look­ing to ap­ply it to can­cer.

Mass­a­chu­setts-based Au­ron Ther­a­peu­tics fo­cus­es on ther­a­pies that tar­get dys­reg­u­lat­ed cells that can lead to tu­mors and can­cer.

Ac­cord­ing to Au­ron CEO and founder Kate Yen, the biotech is de­vel­op­ing ther­a­pies that tar­get dis­rupt­ed cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. To do that it has built a pro­pri­etary ma­chine learn­ing and com­pu­ta­tion­al plat­form dubbed AU­Ri­gin. The plat­form al­lows it to in­te­grate mul­ti omics da­ta sets from both nor­mal hu­man tis­sue and tu­mor sam­ples to help iden­ti­fy path­ways that are crit­i­cal for both nor­mal cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and then how those path­ways have been hi­jacked by tu­mor cells.

“By un­der­stand­ing how tu­mor cells have hi­jacked nor­mal cel­lu­lar dif­ferenta­tion process­es, we can iden­ti­fy nov­el tar­gets to per­turb with the goal of caus­ing can­cer cells to stop pro­lif­er­at­ing by pro­mot­ing ter­mi­nal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, and/or cell death,” Yen told End­points News.

Ac­cord­ing to Yen, the rea­son the com­pa­ny went with ma­chine learn­ing mod­els is be­cause it al­lows Au­ron to un­der­stand the path­ways that are crit­i­cal for pro­mot­ing nor­mal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. And the ma­chine learn­ing al­go­rithms al­so al­low bio­mark­ers to be iden­ti­fied that can ac­cu­rate­ly pre­dict dif­fer­ent stages of nor­mal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and how those bio­mark­ers are dys­reg­u­lat­ed in the tu­mor cells.

“By build­ing those mod­els, we can track how these mark­ers are dif­fer­ent in can­cer cells de­ter­mine dri­vers of dys­reg­u­lat­ed dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in can­cer and ul­ti­mate­ly iden­ti­fy nov­el tar­gets,” she said.

Funds from the round give the com­pa­ny a run­way of two years, Yen said, which will be used to ad­vance Au­ron’s lead pro­gram to­ward clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and dri­ve ad­di­tion­al pro­grams in­to even­tu­al drug dis­cov­ery, but no time­line has been set for that. It will al­so be used to ex­pand the AU­Ri­gin plat­form as well as bring on four to five staff mem­bers.

The com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly sits at 11 staff mem­bers.

Yen sees the com­pa­ny, by tar­get­ing cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, as what sets them apart from the com­pe­ti­tion.

“Most cur­rent can­cer ther­a­pies don’t tar­get cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, but rather at­tack rapid­ly di­vid­ing cells like chemother­a­py, or they fo­cus on tar­get­ing path­ways that af­fect pro­lif­er­a­tion and tu­mor growth,” she said. “Our ap­proach is to tar­get al­tered dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion path­ways to push pa­tients in­to long-term durable treat­ment re­spons­es. We think this opens up an un­tapped op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring nov­el ther­a­pies to pa­tients.”

The round was led by DCVC Bio with sup­port from new in­vestors Mubadala Cap­i­tal and Apol­lo Health Ven­tures. Ex­ist­ing in­vestors who par­tic­i­pat­ed in­clude Arkin Bio Ven­tures, Po­laris Part­ners, Qim­ing Ven­ture Part­ners USA, Eli Lil­ly, the Amer­i­can Can­cer So­ci­ety’s in­vest­ment arm Bright­Edge, Franklin Berg­er and Cas­din Cap­i­tal.

When gene editing exploded onto the scene over three decades ago, it brought previously inconceivable disease treatment and potentially curative therapies into view. Today, gene editing remains one of the most gripping topics in biopharma — and a recent wave of partnerships may move the industry even closer to broad, curative treatment for genetic disease.

Discoveries across the natural environment deriving in vivo and ex vivo biotechnologies have ushered a floodgate of development possibilities. With giants like Bayer, Moderna, Vertex and others signaling that gene editing will be a key driver of their future pipelines, how will the industry leverage this new frontier of genomic technology?

Roche CEO Severin Schwan will be moving to the board chairman role in a few months, making room for Thomas Schinecker — the current chief of the diagnostics division — to take the helm of the Swiss pharma conglomerate.

The changeover will take place at the company’s annual general meeting in March as Christoph Franz, chairman since 2014, decided not to seek re-election to the board.

The shuffle at the top comes as Roche has steadily beefed up its early-stage pipeline while vigilantly guarding its position as one of the top drugmakers around the world. By Evaluate’s estimate, it is set to rank second on the list of largest pharmas by 2028, falling just a tad behind AbbVie.

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The room was packed and electric. That’s how it felt hosting an event in person for Endpoints News readers last month in San Diego.

It exceeded all our expectations, which wasn’t a given, with the pandemic changing the nature of live events. We hadn’t done one in over two years. And Endpoints grew a lot during that time. We quickly built a serious virtual events platform and developed big audiences around those online channels. But there’s nothing quite like being with your colleagues at a live event. Endpoints has a tradition of convening our audience of biopharma pros in major hubs worldwide since our start in 2016. And we’re thrilled to jump right back in.

With demand rising for Bavarian Nordic’s smallpox vaccine, European officials have given the thumbs up to expand the label to include monkeypox.

Imvanex, marketed as Jynneos in the US, has been approved in Europe to treat smallpox since 2013. On Friday, the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended adding a monkeypox indication to the label, as global cases surge past 15,000. The label expansion still needs to be approved by the European Commission before it’s official.

How does a cancer drug cross the FDA finish line 3-5 months before its PDUFA date? That’s where the Real-Time Oncology Review comes in.

For the last five years, FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence under Rick Pazdur has been quietly tapped into RTOR to allow sponsors to provide even earlier, segmented submissions of critical efficacy and safety data, thereby enabling these faster evaluations of applications.

After Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn’s first major knee surgery in 2013, she couldn’t sleep. That was the beginning of a cycle of more injuries, added anxiety and stress snowballing into an eventual diagnosis of insomnia.

Now Vonn’s teaming up with Idorsia Pharmaceuticals on its sleep drug Quvivic as its newest celebrity patient ambassador. Vonn appeared in media interviews this week, including on the Today Show and People magazine, talking about her struggles with sleep, along with overall mental health issues.

Lonza’s recent building spree and contracts have the manufacturer looking positive as it enters the second half of the year.

According to Lonza’s financial report for H1, which was released on Friday, the Swiss manufacturer posted sales of CHF 3 billion, or $3.1 billion, granting them a total of 16.8% growth in sales.

The first half’s core EBIDTA for Lonza also rose 33.1% according to the company. The company is still targeting low to mid-teen sales and EBIDTA growth for the year.

After 20 years of service at GSK — leading global vaccines R&D for the last seven — Emmanuel Hanon left last year for a wellness company with a gut microbiome focus called Viome.

One of the major reasons for the departure, according to him, was in essence to learn something new and to be exposed to a new environment.

But it didn’t take long for him to return to the vaccine world full-time. Hanon has now taken the top position at a Medicxi-backed biotech working on a vaccine for RSV called Vicebio.

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A California developer is following up on one of the hottest trends in biotech, taking out a loan to extend its operating runway while the biotech sector takes a beating on Nasdaq.

Vaccine outfit Gritstone bio put out word Thursday that it entered into an $80 million credit facility with Hercules Capital and Silicon Valley Bank. The facility, a type of loan, breaks down in the following: $20 million drawn by Gritstone at closing, with another $10 million available to withdraw by March 15, 2023. The remaining $50 million will become available in tranches through June 15, 2024 as Gritstone achieves certain, unspecified milestones.

Bioscience & Technology Business Center The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas

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