Bystander effect

• Zai Lab Limited (NASDAQ: ZLAB; HKEX: 9688) today announced that it will present findings from preclinical studies highlighting the therapeutic potential of ZL-1310, the company’s global next-generation antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) program.
• ZL-1310 is a novel and promising ADC within the Zai Lab global oncology R&D pipeline, targeting the Delta-like ligand 3 (DLL3), a validated therapeutic target in the treatment of small cell lung cancer (SCLC).
• Zai Lab entered a partnership and exclusive worldwide license agreement with MediLink in April 2023.
• Subsequently, in January 2024, Zai Lab initiated a global Phase 1 study of ZL-1310 in patients with relapsed and refractory SCLC who have progressed after platinum-based treatment.

• (NMS), a clinical-stage biotechnology company member of NMS group, announced the signing of a license agreement with Italfarmaco S.p.A. (ITF), a specialty pharmaceutical company, to develop and commercialize a novel peptide-drug conjugate (PDC).
• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231214543204/en/
  Under the terms of the agreement, ITF will use NMS’s proprietary linker-payload technology to develop a novel PDC product candidate.
• This is a significant step to broaden the applicability of our technology,” said Hugues Dolgos, PharmD, Chief Executive Officer of NMS and NMS Group.
• The development program will leverage NMS’s proprietary innovative linker-payload platform technology and ITF’s peptide-based oncology therapeutics technology.

• Within days, the research recorded that the guards were mistreating the prisoners, who began to display signs of distress.
• The abuse and distress became seemed so acute the experiment had to be curtailed after six days.
• Another classic psychological theory is the “bystander effect,” which suggests that people are reluctant to help out in emergency situations if others are nearby.
• This theory dates back to 1964, when a woman was raped and murdered in the early morning in New York.

Heroism and altruism

• In a recent article for The Conversation, I described how acts of heroic altruism are common during terrorist attacks, when people often risk their own lives to help others.
• There is a growing awareness amongst researchers that heroism is natural and spontaneous, and by no means exceptional.
• There is a recent video of the New York City subway, when a wheelchair-bound man fell on to the track.
• As I point out in my book DisConnected, these acts of impulsive altruism suggest an empathic connection between human beings.

A new view of human nature

• In my view, early psychologists may have been unconsciously tailoring their experiments to confirm a view of human nature as innately cruel.
• Around the same time, genetic theories were published that suggested that human beings are biological engines, caring for nothing but replication and survival.
• As the forerunner of positive psychology, Abraham Maslow, said in 1968: human nature has been “sold short” by psychology.

• PYX-201 is a novel antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) product candidate licensed from Pfizer targeting extradomain-B (EDB) of fibronectin, a non-internalizing antigen, that is an integral component of the extracellular matrix in tumors.
• EDB fibronectin is overexpressed in many solid tumors and minimally expressed in most normal adult tissues.
• “PYX-201 has the potential to offer a new approach to targeting multiple tumor types via a multipronged mechanism of action that may benefit patients with solid tumors.
• “I’m proud of the work done by the Pyxis Oncology team to initiate dosing in our first clinical trial.