In case you didn’t get the memo, Gilead is bet­ting that a cock­tail ap­proach will win them a cov­et­ed place in the NASH show­down.

A day af­ter draw­ing at­ten­tion to pos­i­tive proof-of-con­cept da­ta around its cilofex­or/fir­so­co­stat ther­a­py, the Big Biotech says it’s kick­ing off an­oth­er clin­i­cal tri­al in col­lab­o­ra­tion with No­vo Nordisk in which semaglu­tide will be added to form a three-drug reg­i­men.

A block­buster fa­vorite among up-and-com­ing di­a­betes drugs, semaglu­tide is a GLP-1 ana­logue that not on­ly stim­u­lates se­cre­tion of in­sulin but al­so is thought to im­prove glu­cose me­tab­o­lism in the liv­er and in­crease fat­ty acid ox­i­da­tion. Giv­en that more than 40% of NASH pa­tients have di­a­betes and more than 80% of them are al­so liv­ing with obe­si­ty (No­vo Nordisk’s num­bers) — an­oth­er tar­get in­di­ca­tion for semaglu­tide — the Dan­ish drug­mak­er has called its in­ter­est in the dis­ease a “nat­ur­al ex­pan­sion.”

For Gilead, this will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to for­ti­fy a grow­ing NASH port­fo­lio as well as flex its sci­en­tif­ic mus­cles. The part­ner­ship al­so cov­ers a po­ten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion on pre­clin­i­cal re­search to bet­ter un­der­stand an ail­ment of­ten dubbed a silent dis­ease.

With car­diopul­monary sales wan­ing — caused by loom­ing gener­ic en­try and il­lus­trat­ed by a round of lay­offs an­nounced this week — the hep C op­er­a­tions shrink­ing, HIV un­der as­sault and the bold new CAR-T ven­ture slow to im­press, Gilead is pressed to find a new area in which it can es­tab­lish as for­mi­da­ble a pres­ence as it had in the an­tivi­ral realm.

It took a hit when selon­sert­ib flopped in a close­ly-watched Phase III, out­per­formed by the place­bo at the low dose, dash­ing hopes for a vault to the lead po­si­tion as a flock of small play­ers take turns to present their own late-stage re­sults.

As ri­vals — in­clud­ing In­ter­cept, Gen­fit, Madri­gal and NGM Bio, which is part­nered with Mer­ck — crowd in, Gilead has been pick­ing up ear­ly-stage as­sets in pur­suit of a sus­tain­ing fran­chise. In fact, cilofex­or came from the buy­out of Phenex Phar­ma and you might re­mem­ber fir­so­co­stat as GS-0976, which Gilead paid Nim­bus $600 mil­lion for.

The com­pa­ny al­so hasn’t giv­en up on selon­sert­ib, which is be­ing test­ed in a triple com­bo with cilofex­or and fir­so­co­stat.

Im­age: Er­ic Ris­berg AP

About a month af­ter Codex­is notched a deal with No­var­tis $NVS, the Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny $CDXS on Thurs­day said long-time in­vestor Cas­din Cap­i­tal is putting up $50 mil­lion in a pri­vate place­ment, which puts the New York-based in­vest­ment firm in con­trol of more than 5% of the pro­tein en­gi­neer­ing play­er’s stock.

Eli Cas­din start­ed his epony­mous in­vest­ment firm in 2012 and dates his re­la­tion­ship with Codex­is back to at least a decade. About three years ago, Cas­din Cap­i­tal be­gan in­vest­ing in the in­dus­tri­al biotech com­pa­ny, af­ter it piv­ot­ed its fo­cus to the life sci­ences — un­der the aus­pices of new chief John Nicols — away from the en­er­gy in­dus­try.

Such is the state of af­fairs in an­tibi­ot­ic land that the FDA agree­ing to pri­or­i­ty re­view an ap­pli­ca­tion to ex­pand the use of an an­tibi­ot­ic can rock­et up a stock more than two-fold.

On Wednes­day, Melin­ta Ther­a­peu­tics said its ap­proved an­tibi­ot­ic Baxdela had been grant­ed pri­or­i­ty re­view for use in com­mu­ni­ty-ac­quired bac­te­r­i­al pneu­mo­nia (CAPB). The FDA is ex­pect­ed to make its de­ci­sion by Oc­to­ber 24. Shares of the Con­necti­cut drug­mak­er $ML­NT cat­a­pult­ed, clos­ing up near­ly 224% at $6.41.

By Lucy Clos­sick Thom­son, Se­nior Di­rec­tor of On­col­o­gy Pro­ject Man­age­ment, Icon

Clin­i­cal tri­als in on­col­o­gy can be cost­ly and chal­leng­ing to man­age. One fac­tor that could re­duce costs and re­duce bar­ri­ers is har­ness­ing the pa­tient voice in tri­al de­sign to help ac­cel­er­ate pa­tient en­roll­ment. Now is the time to adopt pa­tient-cen­tric strate­gies that not on­ly fo­cus on pa­tient needs, but al­so can main­tain cost ef­fi­cien­cy.

Three biotechs — and a genome se­quenc­ing play­er — have caught the lat­est tide to the Gold Coast of IPOs, round­ing out the first half of 2019 with 23 new drug de­vel­op­ers mak­ing it on Nas­daq.

Most of these com­pa­nies filed their IPOs al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, though we’re still wait­ing on word of fel­low class­mate Bridge­Bio’s pric­ing af­ter CEO Neil Ku­mar set the terms at $14 to $16 a share on Mon­day in search of a $240 mil­lion (or so) wind­fall. If he’s suc­cess­ful, that would take the one-week haul past the $700 mil­lion mark, a fresh sign that in­vestors’ en­thu­si­asm for new­ly coined pub­lic biotechs hasn’t cooled.

So what’s up at Al­ler­gan?

Ear­li­er this week the ubiq­ui­tous Ever­core ISI an­a­lyst Umer Raf­fat was on the line with com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives to probe in­to the lat­est on the num­bers as well as CEO Brent Saun­ders’ re­cent de­c­la­ra­tion that he’d be do­ing some­thing de­fin­i­tive to help long-suf­fer­ing in­vestors who have watched their shares dwin­dle in val­ue.

He came away with the im­pres­sion that a sig­nif­i­cant com­pa­ny split is on the way. And not on some dis­tant time hori­zon.

Robert For­rester is step­ping down as CEO of Ve­rastem On­col­o­gy $VSTM just 8 months af­ter the com­pa­ny nabbed an ap­proval for du­velis­ib, a PI3K drug with a sto­ried past — and what ap­pears as not much of a fu­ture.

The biotech put out word this morn­ing that For­rester will take an ad­vi­so­ry role with Ve­rastem while COO Dan Pa­ter­son steps up to take charge of the lead­er­ship team and the board looks around for a new CEO.