The current generation of cell therapies has proven a game changer in terms of treating aggressive blood cancers, but the tech has its limitations. Novartis, one of the biggies in the current generation of these drugs, is now taking lessons learned from CAR-T Kymriah to supercharge a “second-generation” of CAR-Ts putting superior cells into patients faster.

Novartis on Monday rolled out early Phase I data for a pair of autologous CAR-T cell therapies developed through the drugmaker’s T-Charge platform, a process designed to promote T cell “stemness” — a measure of a cell’s ability to self-renew — by cutting manufacturing times and spurring cell proliferation primarily in patients’ lymph nodes.

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Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

I hope your weekend is off to a nice start, wherever you are reading this email. As for me, I’m trying to catch the tail of the Lunar New Year festivities.

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While mRNA took center stage at yesterday’s FDA vaccine advisory committee meeting, Novavax announced its plans to deliver an updated protein-based vaccine based on new guidance.

Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) members voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all future vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

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Sana Biotechnology is finally headed to the clinic.

Thursday afternoon, the biotech announced the FDA had cleared its application to start a clinical trial for its allogeneic, or “off-the-shelf,” CAR-T cell therapy targeting the antigen CD19 for patients with B-cell lymphomas and leukemias. Sana said its therapy, dubbed SC291, was designed to evade the immune system, which could help cell therapy produce a more durable response in patients, a concern that has followed such off-the-shelf therapies that use donor cells as opposed to a patient’s own cells.

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A 13-year-old Dutch biotech is going through a liquidation process after an unexpected end to its Phase III trial testing whether its combination of two monoclonal antibodies was superior to Incyte’s Jakafi.

Xenikos had hoped to prove its investigational therapy, named T-Guard, was better than Jakafi at garnering a complete response in patients experiencing life-threatening complications in which new cells from a hematopoietic stem cell transplant begin to fight the body. Jakafi was approved for the indication, steroid-refractory acute graft-versus-host disease, in May 2019.

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