Xenetic Biosciences, Inc. has announced an expansion of its research and development collaboration with The Scripps Research Institute to advance its DNase platform. This collaboration will now include additional models of lymphoma and leukemia in order to further validate the promising DNase-I data observed to date. Xenetic's DNase-based oncology platform targets neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), which are implicated in cancer spread and immunosuppression. Preclinical studies have shown that co-administration of DNase I with CAR-T cell therapy significantly improves therapeutic outcomes in models of lymphoma and metastatic melanoma. This has prompted the expansion of the research program to include further models to validate these findings. The company is moving towards Phase 1 clinical development for treating pancreatic carcinoma and other solid tumors with its systemic DNase I candidate, XBIO-015, though no specific results from these trials have been presented yet.