(US) Tandy Leather Factory, Inc. is an American specialty retailer and wholesale distributor of leather and leather related products. It operates in three divisions: wholesale leathercraft, retail leathercraft and international leathercraft. Originally part of the Tandy Corporation, Tandy Leather has gone through a series of acquisitions and mergers, eventually being sold to The Leather Factory in 2000. Tandy Leather Factory had over 100 stores worldwide. The Tandy Leather headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas also houses the Al and Ann Stohlman Museum. Tandy Leather began as a family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas in 1919. Norton Hinckley and Dave L. Tandy partnered to start the Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company and concentrated their efforts on selling sole leather and other supplies to shoe repair dealers in Texas. During World War II, civilian leather rationing prompted the company to move towards leatherworking as a hobby, which gave the company supply priority by providing for the armed forces.
(US) Novus Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical stage biotechnology company using its expertise in targeting the CD40L pathway to develop potential treatments for patients living with an autoimmune disease, patients requiring an organ or cell-based transplant, and for patients living with ALS. The company’s lead compound in development is AT-1501, a humanized IgG1 anti-CD40L antibody with high affinity for CD40 ligand (CD40L, also called CD154), a well-validated biological target with broad therapeutic potential. The CD40L/CD40 pathway is widely recognized for its prominent role in immune regulation. CD40L is primarily expressed on activated CD4+ T cells, platelets and endothelial cells while the CD40 receptor is constitutively expressed on antigen presenting cells such as B cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells. By blocking CD40L and not the CD40 receptor, AT-1501 inhibits both the CD40 and CD11 costimulatory signaling pathways, providing the potential for improved efficacy compared to anti-CD40 receptor approaches. Blocking CD40L also increases polarization of CD4+ lymphocytes to Tregs, a specialized subpopulation of T cells that act to suppress an immune response, thus creating a more tolerogenic environment, which is especially important for autoimmune diseases and in the transplant setting. Furthermore AT-1501 is an IgG1 antibody specifically engineered to cripple the Fc effector function to potentially improve safety, as well as potentially provide pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, and dosing advantages compared to other approaches.
(US) Yumanity Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to accelerating the revolution in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases through its scientific foundation and drug discovery platform. The Company's most advanced product candidate, YTX-7739, is currently in Phase 1 clinical development for Parkinson's disease. Yumanity's drug discovery platform is designed to enable the Company to rapidly screen for potential disease-modifying therapies by overcoming toxicity of misfolded proteins in neurogenerative diseases. Yumanity's pipeline consists of additional programs focused on Lewy body dementia, multi- system atrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), frontotemporal lobar dementia (FTLD), and Alzheimer's disease.