Patient driven research laboratory 100% dedicated to accelerating cures for chordoma. A program of @ChordomaFDN.
Durham, NC
Joined March 2024
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Chordoma Foundation Labs retweeted
We’re thrilled to announce a new joint grants program with @TheMarkFdn offering awards of up to $500K to help pave the way for chordoma patients to benefit from emerging treatment approaches that target cell surface proteins or peptides presented by MHC molecules on cancer cells. This is a major area of opportunity that builds on the results of several projects we’ve supported in recent years to identify surface targets.
Researchers: the request for proposals will open on Monday, October 26. More info: chordomafoundation.org/resea…
We're expanding our team to serve a growing number of researchers and companies making progress towards the first brachyury/TBXT drugs. If being a crucial part of drugging this once undruggable target would be fulfilling for you or someone you know we'd love to talk!
We're hiring a Senior Research Associate to join our @CFLabsResearch team and support the development of first-in-class drugs targeting brachyury (TBXT), a critical vulnerability in chordoma. Help us build on exciting recent advances in drugging this promising target! More: chordomafoundation.org/team/…
Chordoma Foundation Labs retweeted
X-Chem is the first team to win a prize in the Chordoma Foundation’s TBXT Challenge, with a binding hit verified by the foundation’s lab. Could other rare-disease foundations use the same model? buff.ly/GaWxWnB
Thrilled to announce that we have a first winner of the TBXT Challenge: chordomafoundation.org/lates…
Huge congrats to the team at
@XChemInc for discovering the first submicromolar TBXT binder and winning our $100k prize!
Now that this critical threshold has been crossed we’re more hopeful than ever that additional potent binders will be discovered, and that these compounds will open the door to a range of modalities like PROTACs, RIPTACs and others.
The Challenge remains ongoing with two more prizes available including up to $250k for sub-300 nM binders.
Very grateful to the @XChemInc team and all TBXT Challenge participants for redefining what’s possible in drugging this historically challenging target. Huge thanks also to all who have made this competition possible, particularly @biohub and @TheMarkFdn for supporting the capabilities in our lab to evaluate compounds submitted through the challenge, and to @Cytiva for their awesome technical support of our SPR pipeline.
We can’t wait to see what continues to emerge from the Challenge, and the therapeutic development that will follow!
This is the dream. And a reason to go after essential but hard targets like TBXT. While in the meantime making sure patients get the most out of existing drugs by dramatically reducing barriers to repurposing, both at the individual and histology or subgroup levels.
I agree with this, but there is one one area it may be too conservative.
If we do start to generate therapies that have true step change efficacy *with* low tox, we will start to see really excellent response rates (90%+) in early stage trials.
If that happens, my expectation is that all the downstream trials will go much faster, or, at the limit, be unnecessary.
I don't *necessarily* expect this to happen soon (a lot of things to solve), but if we do start reliably hitting early stage home runs, I think the entire trial and approval apparatus will speed up immensely.
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Important and timely project for applying surface target directed therapies to cancer. As new cancer associated surface proteins are identified it’ll be valuable to have a deeper understanding not only of their distribution across normal tissues but internalization, trafficking and payload delivery behavior.
2/ In five years, the Deliverome Project will build public AI-ready datasets for directing medicines to specific tissues, cell types, and diseases—increasing the number of targets for precision medicine >tenfold.
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We are not infrequently asked what genes brachyury/TBXT expression is correlated or anticorrelated with across chordoma models. We created this new figure to provide some quick answers: figshare.com/articles/figure…
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Today seems like a fitting time to announce that @ChordomaFDN is once again offering two immunotherapy funding opportunities in partnership with @CancerResearch: $300K for translational research cancerresearch.org/clip and up to $1M for clinical research cancerresearch.org/clinical-…
The LOI deadline for both funding opportunities is Dec 1. For those new to chordoma, we also offer a range of enabling resources intended to lower the barrier to entering the field and applying cutting edge approaches to this disease: chordomafoundation.org/resea…
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Exciting times for cancer vaccines. We need to understand how to overcome immune exclusion in chordoma!
Here we go. We're entering a new era with personalized cancer vaccines. A big step forward.
endpoints.news/merck-moderna…
The International Chordoma Research Workshop is coming to Boston Sept. 17–18!
This year’s program will feature 40+ presentations sharing new, unpublished findings across basic, translational, and clinical chordoma research, plus posters and plenty of dedicated time for discussion, brainstorming, and conversation.
A preview of what’s on the agenda:
- Molecular subclassification & tumor heterogeneity: Single-cell and multi-omic studies revealing molecular subtypes, cell-state-specific therapeutic targets, and potential prognostic biomarkers.
- Tumor microenvironment & immunobiology: New spatial profiling data shedding light on how chordoma’s stromal architecture and immune milieu suppress antitumor immunity, as well as potential ways to overcome those barriers.
- Enabling clinical development: Emerging datasets, trial infrastructure, and prospective studies aimed at making development of new systemic therapies faster and more efficient.
- Emerging therapeutic concepts: New preclinical and early clinical findings spanning genetic and metabolic vulnerabilities, engineered cell therapies, and cell-surface-directed approaches.
- Brachyury biology & therapeutic opportunities: New insights into brachyury’s roles in metabolism and chromatin remodeling, along with emerging strategies to target its expression or function in chordoma and other cancers.
- Optimizing care: Advances across surgery, radiotherapy, intraoperative imaging, restoration of neurologic function, molecular profiling, and more.
We expect a lot of new observations and ideas to emerge from these two days, along with opportunities for the chordoma research community to connect the dots across disciplines and help shape where the field goes next.
If you’re currently working on chordoma or considering entering this field, we hope you’ll join us in Boston!
See the speaker lineup, register, and learn more: chordomafoundation.org/event…
Chordoma Foundation Labs retweeted
The future we bet on at @muni_bio is one where agentic workflows become the default in early drug discovery.
In our latest post, we walk through a pipeline designed and executed autonomously using @RowanSci tools for our TBXT hackathon. These candidates were submitted to @onepot_ai alongside compounds designed by other human participants.
As agentic loops continue to reshape every part of the drug discovery pipeline, scientists and engineers need to think about grounding their in-silico loops in the wet lab to avoid lead-slop.
muni.bio/research/muni-goal-…
Chordoma Foundation Labs retweeted
Some of our most validating work for agent-driven hit identification. We’ve done it once before with protein binders, and we’ve done it again with small molecules.
In this post co-written with @RowanSci, we discuss data from our TBXT hackathon, our agents topping the leaderboard, and the future of agentic systems in drug discovery.
The skepticism in this field is healthy, but we continue to be optimistic that agentic loops will be at the core of discovery, and this is positive signal that we’ve been betting in the right direction.
On their first shot teams in an agentic med-chem hackathon by @RowanSci & @muni_bio submitted compounds to the TBXT Challenge that included 6 new TBXT binders. A 50% hit rate. In 7 hrs. Pretty impressive. Grateful for this effort, and that they put the results in the open!
We've gotten results back from our first agentic med-chem hackathon, and the teams found real wet-lab hits!
In this post co-written w/ @muni_bio, we explore how the teams did, which strategies worked, and what we've learned from this first experience:
rowansci.com/blog/hits-from-…
Chordoma Foundation Labs retweeted
We've gotten results back from our first agentic med-chem hackathon, and the teams found real wet-lab hits!
In this post co-written w/ @muni_bio, we explore how the teams did, which strategies worked, and what we've learned from this first experience:
rowansci.com/blog/hits-from-…
Well this is cool: new Bindome database has 9 predicted TBXT miniprotein binders. Could be super useful tools for TBXT drug discovery. Thanks @j_wenckstern @befcorreia!
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What could we discover if we had a binder for every protein in the human proteome?
We are excited to introduce the Bindome, an open and free resource of over 300,000 designed protein binder candidates against over 8,000 human target proteins.
🧵
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Latest figure posted on @figshare: Response of chordoma cell lines to gedatolisib, everolimus, and paxalisib
doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.…
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Chordoma Foundation Labs retweeted
NEW: Anthropic announces it is developing its own preclinical drug programs
No specifics provided beyond a focus on neglected diseases
"To build the right models, products and tools, we need to live it along with all of you," Eric Kauderer-Abrams, Anthropic life sci head, says
A recent trial suggests pemetrexed may help some patients with advanced chordoma. To help enable research to predict which patients are most likely to benefit, we’ve identified chordoma cell lines that are sensitive or resistant to pemetrexed and posted results to @figshare 1/n
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5 cell lines are highly sensitive with EC50 of ~25-100nM, three have intermediate sensitivity and two are highly resistant with EC50 above 10uM. figshare.com/articles/figure… 2/n
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