Wugen launches clinical trial for cancer drug | Duke studies brain changes

Clinical trial for cancer drug

ST. LOUIS, MO–Clinical-stage biotechnology startup Wugen, which has raised more than $200 million in venture funding, has launched a clinical trial for one of its cancer-fighting therapies—the drug WU-CART-007. Wugen has dosed the first patient in the initial phase of a clinical trial focused on studying the drug’s treatment of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and lymphoblastic lymphoma.

15-minute COVID test gets FDA emergency approval

EVANSTON, IL–A new highly sensitive, easy-to-use test for COVID-19 that requires a single swab and 15 minutes has received emergency use authorization status from the FDA. The test was developed at Northwestern University’s Center for Innovation in Global Health Technologies. Called DASH (Diagnostic Analyzer for Specific Hybridization), the device is about the size of a cereal box.

Making mice more gregarious

DURHAM, NC—A team of brain researchers at Duke University has found a way to identify how social or solitary an individual mouse is and it’s not measured by the number of its Facebook friends. By tweaking nodes in the mouse’s brain, the researchers could prompt them to be more gregarious. The research may lead to better diagnostic tools to understand how the brain changes in people with impaired social communication, such as those with autism spectrum disorder.

Next-gen pathology diagnostics

CLEVELAND, OH—Cleveland Clinic is entering into a collaboration with PathAI, which creates AI-powered research tools, to build a digital infrastructure to research next-generation pathology diagnostics. The collaboration aims to enhance treatment for various disease states using a multi-modal dataset.