University of Uppsala

Today, a brief rundown of news involving Tenvie Therapeutics and Jasper Therapeutics, as well as updates from Sana Biotechnology, Stoke Therapeutics and City Therapeutics that you may have missed.A new San Francisco-area startup, Tenvie Therapeutics, launched on Wednesday with $200 million in funding. Tenvie is supported by Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital and Mubadala Capital, and is built around drug assets from another Arch-backed company, Denali Therapeutics. Tony Estrada, who oversaw drug discovery work at Denali for the better part of a decade, is now leading Tenvie. The companys most advanced programs target two kinds of proteins tied to neurodegeneration. Jacob BellJasper Therapeutics on Wednesday shared data from a Phase 1b/2a study testing its antibody drug briquilimab in people with a type of hives known as chronic spontaneous urticaria. The company described the results as positive, showing treatment helped reduce hives severity and itchiness among study participants given one of six briquilimab doses. Jasper said treatment was well tolerated, but disclosed three people experienced neutropenia, including one whose adverse event was rated as medically significant. Investors appeared less impressed with the data, however, sending shares in the company down by more than half on Wednesday morning. Ned PagliaruloShares in Sana Biotechnology tripled in value Wednesday morning after the company said researchers using its technology successfully transplanted pancreatic islet cells into a person with Type 1 diabetes without using immunosuppression. According to Sana's CEO, this outcome is the first proof of an allogeneic transplant surviving without immune suppression or protection in an individual whose immune system is fully functioning. Researchers from Sweden's Uppsala University Hospital are conducting the study in partnership with Sana, which has developed a “hypoimmune“ technology that can generate cells able to evade detection by the body's defenses. Sana is preparing to run its own study of an allogeneic islet cell therapy it's developing in-house for Type 1 diabetes. Ned PagliaruloStoke Therapeutics has finalized plans for a Phase 3 study testing its experimental drug for Dravet syndrome, a severe developmental disease characterized by regular seizures. According to the company, it secured “alignment“ from regulators in the U.S., Europe and Japan to proceed with a one-year trial testing the effect of its drug on major motor seizure frequency. Stoke expects to enroll about 150 children and teenagers with Dravet in the trial, which it's dubbing Emperor. Data are expected by the end of 2027, the company said. Ned PagliaruloAndy Orth, a veteran of Krystal Biotech and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, will become CEO of City Therapeutics, the RNA drug developer disclosed Tuesday. He joins three months after City launched publicly with $135 million in funding and plans to develop next-generation medicines that work by RNA interference, the Nobel Prize-winning technology pioneered by Alnylam. Orth was previously Krystal's chief commercial officer and, before that, led Alnylam's U.S. business, helping launch the company's first approved drug, Onpattro. Former Alnylam CEO John Maraganore will remain City's executive chair. Ned Pagliarulo '

THURSDAY, Dec. 26, 2024 -- Gestational hypertension, preeclampsia , and eclampsia are associated with an increased risk for neurological outcomes in the months or years after giving birth, according to a study published online Dec. 23 in JAMA Neurology . Therese Friis, M.D., from Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues examined whether gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, and eclampsia are associated with new-onset migraine, headache, epilepsy, sleep disorder, or mental fatigue within months to years after giving birth in a register-based cohort study. A total of 659,188 primiparous women with singleton pregnancies between 2005 and 2018 were identified through the Swedish Medical Birth Register; the final study population included 648,385 women. The researchers found that compared with women with normotensive pregnancies, women with gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, and eclampsia all had an association with an increased risk for a new-onset neurological disorder (adjusted hazard ratios, 1.27, 1.32, and 1.70, respectively). On examination of individual outcomes, the risk for epilepsy was increased more than fivefold for women with eclampsia (adjusted hazard ratio, 5.31). "Our findings warrant further investigations of neurological complications after gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, and eclampsia," the authors write. "They also highlight the need for follow-up regarding neurological disorders in women affected by these pregnancy complications." One author disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

THURSDAY, Dec. 5, 2024 -- Use of tibolone or oral estrogen-progestin therapy is associated with an increased risk for specific cardiovascular diseases, according to a study published online Nov. 27 in The BMJ . Therese Johansson, from Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues examined the effect of contemporary menopausal hormone therapy on the risk for cardiovascular disease according to the route of administration. The nationwide emulated target trial involved 919,614 women aged 50 to 58 years between 2007 and 2020 without hormone therapy use in the previous two years. Women were assigned to one of eight treatment groups. Overall, 77,512 women were initiators of any menopausal hormone therapy and 842,102 women were noninitiators. The researchers found that tibolone was associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease compared with noninitiation (hazard ratio, 1.52) in intention-to-treat analyses. The risk for ischemic heart disease was increased for initiators of tibolone or oral estrogen-progestin therapy (hazard ratios, 1.46 and 1.21, respectively). The risk for venous thromboembolism was increased in association with oral continuous estrogen-progestin therapy, sequential therapy, and estrogen-only therapy (hazard ratios, 1.61, 2.00, and 1.57, respectively). In per-protocol analyses, tibolone was associated with a higher risk for cerebral infarction and myocardial infarction (hazard ratios, 1.97 and 1.94, respectively). "We found that starting oral combined continuous therapy or tibolone was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease within the first two years of initiation," the authors write. Abstract/Full Text Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.