BioCentury
ARTICLE | Preclinical News

May 8 Preclinical Quick Takes: Moderna, WntRx, schizophrenia, heart attack

May 8, 2019 11:04 PM UTC

Moderna debuts candidate for rare glycogen storage disease
Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) revealed a new preclinical mRNA candidate to treat glycogen storage disease type Ia -- mRNA-3745, which encodes G6PC. The company presented data at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) meeting showing a lipid nanoparticle-delivered G6PC mRNA increased fasting glycemia and improved serum and hepatic biomarkers in a mouse model of the disease.

WntRx positions WNT inhibitor to enhance cancer immunotherapy
WntRx Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Boston, Mass.) consultants and colleagues at Fudan and Harvard universities suggested in a Science Advances paper that an inhibitor of the Wnt pathway could overcome resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors rather than killing the cancer cells directly. The researchers designed peptides that disrupted the interaction between β-catenin and Wnt pathway activator BCL9 and showed the peptides blocked tumor infiltration of Treg cells and decreased tumor growth in combination with an anti-PD-1 mAb in mice with colorectal cancer. ...