Heterodimeric interleukin 15

On January 8, Calypso Biotech announced it has entered into a definitive agreement with Novartis Pharma, under which Novartis will acquire Calypso Biotech. According to the agreement, Novartis will pay an upfront payment of $250 million and up to $175 million in development milestone payments. Calypso Biotech’s leading candidate, CALY-002, is a potential best-in-class therapeutic antibody that binds and neutralizes IL-15. This acquisition gives Novartis full rights to CALY-002. Novartis plans to further explore CALY-002 across various autoimmune indications. About CALY-002CALY-002 is a monoclonal antibody drug developed by Calypso Biotech BV. It specifically targets IL-15, a protein involved in immune system regulation. The therapeutic areas that CALY-002 aims to address include immune system diseases, digestive system disorders, endocrinology and metabolic diseases, as well as hemic and lymphatic diseases. The candidate is currently being evaluated in a Phase Ib trial in patients with celiac disease and eosinophilic esophagitis. Click the image below to directly embark on the exploration journey with the CALY-002! About Calypso Biotech BVCalypso Biotech BV is a biomedicine organization founded in 2013 and based in the Netherlands. It has focused on the development of drugs in therapeutic areas such as digestive system disorders, hemic and lymphatic diseases, immune system diseases, and endocrinology and metabolic diseases. The organization has developed drugs targeting specific molecules such as MMP9 and IL-15, indicating its interest in addressing conditions where these molecules play a significant role. While Calypso Biotech BV has made progress in drug development, with one drug in Phase 1, it is still in the early stages of the pipeline and has not yet obtained regulatory approval for any of its products. Calypso Biotech was spun out from Merck Serono in March 2013 and focuses on the research and development of monoclonal antibodies for a range of autoimmune indications, with specialized knowledge in IL-15 biology. IL-15 is a broad, underexploited immune axis that controls barrier function and downstream immune cascades in many chronic autoimmune diseases. How to get the latest progress on drug deals?If you would like to access the latest transaction event information, you can click on the 'Deal' module from the homepage of the Synapse database. Within the Deal module, you can search for global pharmaceutical transaction information using labels such as Drugs, Organization, Target, Drug Type, Deal Date.  Furthermore, you can obtain the original link to the transaction coverage by clicking on the "Deal Name." In the analysis view, you can see the most active assignors, assignees, popular targets, and other dimensions of analysis, as well as the distribution of research and development statuses at the time of the transaction, to help you better understand the search results. The Synapse database also supports the ability to view current transactions from the dimension of "drugs" (by selecting "drugs" from the "Adjust Dimension" dropdown menu above). Targeting transactions involving renowned pharmaceutical companies that are of interest to the industry, such as Merck, Roche, etc., Synapse has identified a group of "leading companies" through drugs that have achieved global sales exceeding 1 billion US dollars in 2022. Transactions involving drugs from these leading companies can be filtered by clicking on the "Leading Company" tag on the left-hand side. In addition to the drug transaction module, you can also view related transaction history on the drug detail page and the institution detail page. Click on the image below to embark on a brand new journey of drug discovery!

Multiple companies are working on IL-15 candidates. Sotio Biotech has dealt another blow to attempts to establish cytokines as a cornerstone of cancer care, scrapping ongoing studies of its IL-15 superagonist after seeing insufficient efficacy in the clinic. The Czech biotech raised 280 million euros ($295 million) to advance the IL-15 candidate, nanrilkefusp alfa, late in 2021. Months later, Bristol Myers Squibb and Nektar Therapeutics’ closely watched IL-2 program imploded, prompting soul searching in the cytokine space, but Sotio forged ahead with its work on the structurally similar IL-15. Now, Sotio faces its own dark day. A look at interim data on nanrilkefusp alfa, also known as SOT101, has revealed “insufficient efficacy to warrant further development in larger randomized trials” in the settings targeted to date, prompting Sotio to immediately stop enrollment in three studies. The clinical trials were evaluating nanrilkefusp alfa in combination with Eli Lilly’s Erbitux and Merck & Co.’s Keytruda in solid tumor patients. While Sotio has abandoned hopes of bringing those combinations to market, it continues to see potential to pair its IL-15 drug candidate with other modalities such as cell therapies. The biotech has seen “promising” preclinical data on a cell therapy combination.  Multiple other companies are working on IL-15 candidates. ImmunityBio got as far as filing for approval of its antibody cytokine fusion protein, only for the FDA to reject the request on manufacturing grounds. Nektar Therapeutics is running a phase 2/3 clinical trial of an IL-15 receptor agonist, NKTR-255. Novartis is closing in on the end of a phase 1 trial of its IL-15 prospect, NIZ985, but stopped enrollment well short of its goal.  Sotio retains an interest in cytokines, noting that its next-generation PD-1-inhibiting candidate is set to enter the clinic in the second quarter of next year. But its R&D pipeline now skews toward antibody-drug conjugates, a modality with a star that has risen as enthusiasm for cytokines has fallen away.