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“This is an exciting day for Duke and the patients we serve,” said Mary E. Klotman, MD, Dean, Duke University School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs. “This new partnership will help further Duke’s commitment to improving the lives of people in our own community and around the world by supporting and accelerating the translation of research into new therapies to treat and cure society’s most formidable healthcare challenges.”

By way of a newly launched company called Four Points Innovation, up to $130 million of initial funding will be made available by Deerfield to back the initiative for 10 years.  Deerfield also will provide development expertise in support of Duke’s innovative drug research across a span of high-need therapeutic areas, as well as those targeting patients who suffer from hard-to-treat and rare diseases.

A private company wholly owned by affiliates of Deerfield, Four Points Innovation will support Duke R&D projects throughout preclinical stages of drug discovery and development. Beginning approximately in March 2020, Duke researchers will have the ability to submit proposals on projects for consideration by a Four Points Innovation committee comprised of scientific leadership representing both Duke and Deerfield.

Accepted projects will include a development plan aimed at achieving Investigational New Drug (IND) readiness. Deerfield will provide funding and operational support for accepted projects, and successful projects that achieve IND-enabled status may be eligible for additional capital from Deerfield.

Duke’s Office of Licensing and Ventures broke previous records last year with 354 invention disclosures, 120 agreements, and 32 exclusive agreements. Duke faculty and staff formed sixteen new start-up companies during the year, bringing the university’s total to over 140 new companies. Over the last two years, 29 of the university’s 32 startups have chosen to stay in North Carolina.

“Duke University, with its vast research enterprise, world-class investigators and novel innovations, is a leader in biomedical discovery,” said James E. Flynn, Managing Partner at Deerfield Management. “We are excited about entering into this partnership with Duke, as we collectively seek to develop new medicines to save lives and address unmet medical needs.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Four Points Innovation would receive an option to license Four Points Innovation-funded intellectual property developed at Duke.

A protective respirator created by the Duke COVID-19 Engineering Response Team to combat the critical shortage of medical equipment was used successfully by health care workers in two Duke Health surgical cases last week.

With the high need for more personal protective equipment, Duke engineering professors Ken Gall, Paul Fearis and Eric Richardson recognized the need to turn a surgical helmet, which uses room air, into a powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR), which uses filtered air.

The Duke Engineering team worked closely with Chip Bobbert, Sr. Engineer and Fabrication Architect in Duke’s Innovation Co-Lab to print and test numerous designs using their Formlabs printers.

Deep Blue has raised more than $800,000 in funding, with $295,000 raised August 2018.

In separate efforts, Levinson is working on additional projects including an anti-biofouling Foley catheter, a non-invasive light imaging technology to diagnose skin disorders, and tissue-engineered skin that resists contraction.

“Sewing a bit of each extension into the abdominal wall, in lieu of traditional sutures, significantly increases mesh anchoring strength and thus the durability of the repair,” Levinson says of the T-Line in an interview with WRAL Techwire. “We believe this approach will greatly improve patient outcomes without necessitating significant changes to current surgical practice.”

The firm says it plans to launch the T-Line at “selected sites” in the near future.

“PBCAR269A is our third off-the-shelf CAR T candidate to advance into the clinic; the second within the last two months. Despite the uncertain impact of COVID-19 on patients and the healthcare community at large, we maintained our focus and dedication that have enabled continued execution during the pandemic,” commented Matt Kane, CEO and co-founder of Precision Biosciences. “Notably, this will be our first study for which all clinical trial material will be produced at our in-house manufacturing facility.”

“There remains significant unmet need for a broadly available and well-tolerated treatment for patients with relapsed or refractory Multiple Myeloma,” said Chris Heery, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Precision BioSciences. “We are committed to improving the access of CAR T therapies for more patients. We appreciate the commitment of our clinical sites to start enrollment ahead of schedule, even during these difficult times, and the willingness of patients to take part in this trial.”

In preclinical disease models, PBCAR269A demonstrated potent in vivo clearance of BCMA+ tumor cells and overall tumor volume reduction, with no evidence of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Clinical trial material for this study is generated at the Company’s in-house Manufacturing Center for Advanced Therapeutics (MCAT) in Durham, North Carolina. PBCAR269A has received Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA for the treatment of multiple myeloma.

About the PBCAR269A Clinical Trial
PBCAR269A is being evaluated in a Phase 1/2a multicenter, nonrandomized, open-label, parallel assignment, single-dose, dose-escalation, and dose-expansion study to evaluate the safety and clinical activity of PBCAR269A in adults with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. The starting dose of PBCAR269A will be 6 x 10⁵ CAR T cells/kg body weight. Subsequent cohorts will be treated with escalating doses to a maximum dose of 6 x 10⁶ CAR T cells/kg body weight. The trial will be conducted at multiple U.S. sites. For more information, visit www.clinicaltrials.gov, study identifier number NCT04171843.

About Precision’s Allogeneic CAR T Platform
Precision is advancing a pipeline of cell-phenotype optimized allogeneic CAR T therapies, leveraging fully-scaled, proprietary manufacturing processes. The platform is designed to maximize the number of patients who can potentially benefit from CAR T therapy. Precision carefully selects high-quality T cells derived from healthy donors as starting material, then utilizes its unique ARCUS genome editing technology to modify the cells via a single-step engineering process. By inserting the CAR gene at the T cell receptor (TCR) locus, this process knocks in the CAR while knocking out the TCR, creating a consistent product that can be reliably and rapidly manufactured and is designed to prevent graft-versus-host disease. Precision optimizes its CAR T therapy candidates for immune cell expansion in the body by maintaining a high proportion of naïve and central memory CAR T cells throughout the manufacturing process and in the final product.

About Precision BioSciences, Inc.
Precision BioSciences, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to improving life (DTIL) with its novel and proprietary ARCUS^® genome editing platform. ARCUS is a highly specific and versatile genome editing platform that was designed with therapeutic safety, delivery, and control in mind. Using ARCUS, the Company’s pipeline consists of multiple “off-the-shelf” CAR T immunotherapy clinical candidates and several in vivo gene correction therapy candidates to cure genetic and infectious diseases where no adequate treatments exist. Elo Life Systems is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Precision BioSciences also using ARCUS to benefit human health and wellness with novel food products that enhance the nutrition and diversity of global food supply. For more information about Precision BioSciences please visit www.precisionbiosciences.com.

About IonQ

We’re building the world’s best quantum computers to solve the world’s hardest problems.

We believe useful quantum computers will look as different from the laptops and smartphones we use every day as classical computers appear next to an abacus. And we believe the best way to build a quantum computer is by starting with nature’s qubit: the atom. Accurate, powerful, and flexible, ionized atoms are the heart of our quantum systems.

After decades of research, IonQ was founded in 2015 by Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim with $2 million in seed funding from New Enterprise Associates, a license to core technology from the University of Maryland and Duke University, and the goal of taking trapped ion quantum computing out of the lab and into the market. The next year, we raised an additional $20 million from GV, Amazon Web Services, and NEA, and built two of the world’s most accurate quantum computers.