→ The first fruits of 23andMe’s ef­forts to gen­er­ate new drugs off the in­sights it gained from a mas­sive amount of ge­net­ic da­ta are tak­ing shape, and Almi­rall is sign­ing up to ripen one of them. The Span­ish der­ma­tol­ogy drug­mak­er has li­censed a bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body that blocks three cy­tokines in the IL-36 cy­tokine fam­i­ly, which are tied to skin con­di­tions such as pso­ri­a­sis and lu­pus, in ad­di­tion to oth­er in­flam­ma­to­ry ail­ments such as ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis, in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease, and Crohn’s dis­ease.

“As a leader in med­ical der­ma­tol­ogy, we felt Almi­rall was the best com­pa­ny to take this pro­gram for­ward and ul­ti­mate­ly de­vel­op an ef­fec­tive ther­a­py for pa­tients,” Ken­neth Hillan, who suc­ceed­ed Genen­tech vet Richard Scheller as head of ther­a­peu­tics at 23andMe, said in a state­ment.

While it start­ed out as a di­rect-to-con­sumer test­ing ser­vice, 23andMe has moved deep­er in­to the ther­a­peu­tic space in re­cent years, most no­tably through a $300 mil­lion part­ner­ship with Glax­o­SmithK­line.

→ We now know the iden­ti­ty of Idor­sia’s mys­tery part­ner from last year. The Swiss biotech — spun out from J&J’s Acte­lion buy­out — had an­nounced that it pock­et­ed a $5 mil­lion pay­ment from an undis­closed par­ty to score a li­cens­ing op­tion on ACT-709478, a brain pen­e­trat­ing T-type cal­ci­um chan­nel block­er. Now we learn that Neu­ro­crine will pay $45 mil­lion if it ex­er­cis­es the op­tion and up to $365 mil­lion in mile­stones.

“We are ex­cit­ed to lever­age the sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­tise of Idor­sia in T-type cal­ci­um chan­nel in­hi­bi­tion to po­ten­tial­ly ad­vance a Phase 2 ready com­pound to help peo­ple suf­fer­ing from epilep­sy. In ad­di­tion to the treat­ment of epilep­sy, the mod­u­la­tion of the cal­ci­um chan­nel may be use­ful for the treat­ment of oth­er dis­or­ders such as es­sen­tial tremor and pain,” Kevin Gor­man, the CEO at Neu­ro­crine, said in a state­ment.

→ Phase­Bio has found a deep-pock­et­ed be­liev­er in its blood thin­ner re­ver­sal agent: SFJ Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which has of­fered up to $120 mil­lion to sup­port the clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of PB2452. First li­censed from As­traZeneca, the “break­through” drug is de­signed to can­cel the ef­fects of tica­grelor, an an­ti­co­ag­u­lant, in ur­gent or sur­gi­cal sit­u­a­tions. Backed by Black­stone Life Sci­ences and Abing­worth, SFJ will al­so take over the bulk of the clin­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry work out­side of the US. In ex­change, Phase­Bio will pay an­nu­al lump sums once (and if) they win ap­provals.

→ Boehringer In­gel­heim Ven­ture Fund and Dutch in­vestor PPF are lead­ing a $22 mil­lion Se­ries C round for Basel, Switzer­land-based NBE Ther­a­peu­tics to bankroll ear­ly clin­i­cal tri­als of its lead as­set. Rid­ing on re­newed en­thu­si­asm for an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates, NBE said their plat­form tech is both more pow­er­ful and safer than the ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions of ADC, be­ing im­mune-stim­u­la­to­ry and em­ploy­ing an an­thra­cy­cline pay­load. NBE-002 tar­gets ROR1 in triple-neg­a­tive breast can­cer and lung can­cer, to be fol­lowed by oth­er sol­id can­cer types and lym­phomas.

→ While await­ing an FDA de­ci­sion on its sec­ond shot at an ap­proval, Aca­cia Phar­ma has in-li­censed a short-act­ing, re­versible in­tra­venous seda­tive/anes­thet­ic from Cos­mo Phar­ma. The €10 mil­lion up­front pay­ment will take the form of an eq­ui­ty sale, with an­oth­er €30 mil­lion due up­on US ap­proval of the drug, By­Fa­vo, and more com­mer­cial mile­stones. “Hav­ing a sec­ond prod­uct that shares the same call­ing points and at­trac­tive com­mer­cial mes­sage as Barhem­sys will make the in­vest­ment in our sales and mar­ket­ing teams more ef­fi­cient,” CEO Mike Bolin­der said in a state­ment.

→ Eye-fo­cused gene ther­a­py de­vel­op­er Eye­ven­sys has scored $30 mil­lion in Se­ries B fund­ing with the help of lead in­vestor Boehringer In­gel­heim Ven­ture Fund. Pon­tif­ax, Bpifrance, CapDe­cisif, In­serm Trans­fert, the Glob­al Health Sci­ences Fund and Pure­os Bioven­tures al­so joined to boost their R&D ef­forts, fea­tur­ing a lead Phase II-ready pro­gram for chron­ic non-in­fec­tious uveitis.

→ The cell ther­a­py ex­perts at Jasper Ther­a­peu­tics have brought in an ex­tra $14.1 mil­lion for their Se­ries A, adding Roche Ven­ture Fund to their ros­ter of mar­quee in­vestors. The new cash will help ex­pand the lead clin­i­cal pro­gram, a CD117-tar­get­ed an­ti­body con­ceived as an al­ter­na­tive con­di­tion­ing reg­i­men be­fore stem cell trans­plants.

→ Fol­low­ing the close of its $1 bil­lion-plus sec­ond fund, GHO Cap­i­tal Part­ners has ac­quired Bel­gian CD­MO Ar­de­na, which is fo­cused on ear­ly-stage drug de­vel­op­ment, from Men­tha Cap­i­tal.

New data from HHS show that more than 162,000 courses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 antiviral Paxlovid were administered across the US over the past week, continuing a streak of increased usage of the pill, and signaling not only rising case numbers but more awareness of how to access it.

In comparison to this week, about 670,000 courses of the Pfizer pill have been administered across the first five months since Paxlovid has been on the US market, averaging about 33,000 courses administered per week in that time.

The FDA is offering more of an explanation of the guardrails around its program that may soon allow states to import prescription drugs in some select circumstances from Canada, but only if such imports will result in significant cost reductions for consumers.

While the agency has yet to sign off on any of the 5 state plans in the works so far, and PhRMA’s suit to block the Trump-era rule allowing such imports is stalled, the new Q&A guidance spells out the various restrictions that states will have to abide by, potentially signaling that a state approval is coming.

Pharmazz is on its way to India’s drug regulator for the second time as its investigational treatment passed muster in a Phase III study in patients with acute ischemic stroke.

The Chicago suburbs-based biotech said its drug sovateltide led to better improvement than placebo on certain measurements of neurological outcomes.

Sovateltide led an improvement of ≥2 points on mRS and an increase of ≥6 points on NIHSS at day 90 in the trial of 158 adults in India. The modified Rankin scale looks at the degree of dependence in the daily activities of people post-stroke event, and the NIH stroke scale measures the stroke-related neurologic deficit.

Leading the way to increase access to cheaper drugs worldwide, Pfizer said Wednesday it will provide all current and future patent-protected medicines and vaccines available in the US or EU on a not-for-profit basis to about 1.2 billion people in 45 lower-income countries.

Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda are the first five countries to sign on to this accord, which will also seek to blaze new paths for quick and efficient regulatory and procurement processes to reduce the usual delays in making new medicines and vaccines available in these countries.

Teva and Allergan have reached settlements with multiple states over their involvement in the opioid crisis. Their latest is worth 9 figures.

West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey announced the newest settlement, worth $161.5 million, at a press conference on Wednesday. The deal would resolve claims that the companies helped fuel the state’s opioid epidemic. If it goes through, it could become the largest state-negotiated settlement in West Virginia’s history, according to Reuters.