May 24 Preclinical Quick Takes: Baker-Garcia team controls cytokine receptor signaling; plus data from Surface, Innate, Moderna and Lyvgen

Cytokine mimics permit control of dimer receptor signaling
David Baker and Christopher Garcia's University of Washington- Stanford University team has created cytokine mimetics -- symmetric compounds for tunable control of cytokine receptor signaling. In a proof-of-concept study reported in Science, the mimetics led to differing levels of EpoR signaling that are associated with different phases of red blood cell development.

Surface, Innate show preclinical efficacy for immunometabolism mAbs
Surface Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:SURF) and Innate Pharma S.A. (Euronext:IPH) revealed preclinical efficacy for the companies' programs targeting CD73 and CD39 in the adenosine pathway. Surface orally presented data for anti-CD73 mAb NZV930 and anti-CD39 mAb SRF617 at the Brisbane Immunotherapy meeting in Brisbane, Australia. Innate published data for anti-CD39 mAb IPH5201 and anti-CD73 mAb IPH5301 in a Cell Reports paper. The adenosine pathway has attracted interest in immuno-oncology based on its ability to control whether immune cells adopt a stimulatory or suppressive phenotype (see "Optimism for A2A")...