A pharma R&D chief jumps to a budding new startup factory — and this time he’s found ‘something completely different’

Luciano Rossetti (file photo)

November 16, 2020 07:00 AM ESTUpdated 09:33 AM

A pharma R&D chief jumps to a budding new startup factory — and this time he’s found 'something completely different’

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Over the course of a tumultuous year, Paul Biondi has been quietly building a new operation inside Flagship Pioneering, one of the most ambitious biotech builders in the VC world. Looking to draw together new drug programs out of the Flagship armada, the Bristol Myers BD vet is setting up a slate of single-asset companies built around new therapeutics that can be spun out of the portfolio of platform companies they specialize in.

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Robert Clarke (Kinaset)

November 30, 2020 07:03 AM EST

Venture

Startups

Kinaset launches with $40M and a JAK inhibitor from Vectura's old pipeline

Nicole DeFeudis

Associate Editor

Kinaset Therapeutics is joining the search for a better severe asthma treatment, picking up where Vectura left off when it decided to clear house last year.

UK-based Vectura — which took a big hit when its most advanced candidate flopped in a Phase III asthma trial back in 2018 — recently shifted to a CDMO model, offloading all of its R&D programs. Robert Clarke, who’s worked on inhalable therapeutics for 21-plus years, had close contacts at the company and took a look at what they were offering. After doing some research, he was attracted by VR475, a pan-JAK inhibitor.

November 30, 2020 07:00 AM EST

Venture

Cell/Gene Tx

Scoop: Google’s GV spearheads the Spotlight syndicate — backing an upstart biotech aimed at ‘democratizing’ gene editing

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

CRISPR had no sooner started to shake the very foundations of drug development before its limitations began to loom large. Gene editing could change the world — if only you could get around the hurdles that threatened to trip up every program.

So it’s only natural to see CRISPR 2.0 taking shape before the pioneers can get the lead therapies through development. And who better than Google’s GV venture arm to take the lead spot in a small syndicate backing some scientists with their own unique twist on a solution?

Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos (via Getty Images)

November 27, 2020 09:56 AM ESTUpdated 01:36 PM

Deals

With aducanumab caught on a cliff, Biogen’s Michel Vounatsos bets billions on another high-risk neuro play

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

With its FDA pitch on the Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab hanging perilously close to disaster, Biogen is rolling the dice on a $3.1 billion deal that brings in commercial rights to one of the other spotlight neuro drugs in late-stage development — after it already failed its first Phase III.

The big biotech has turned to Sage Therapeutics for its latest deal, close to a year after the crushing failure of Sage-217, now dubbed zuranolone, in the MOUNTAIN study.

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Stephané Bancel (Endpoints at JPM20)

November 29, 2020 09:37 PM EST

R&D

Coronavirus

Moderna calibrates final Covid-19 vaccine efficacy at 94.1% — and today it's gunning for the EUA

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

Nearly a year ago, as the coronavirus emerged in China, the NIH and four major companies bet on an unproven genetic technology as the best tool for developing a vaccine to stem the outbreak. Today, a second such vaccine is heading to the FDA.

Moderna said Monday that they will request an emergency use authorization from the FDA after a final analysis showed their mRNA vaccine was 94.1% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19. The data confirm the results from an interim analysis and matches efficacy Pfizer and BioNTech showed in a Phase III study, setting the biotech up to potentially nab one of the first two Covid-19 vaccine OKs.

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November 24, 2020 08:37 AM EST

Bioregnum

Regulatory

The aducanumab conundrum: The PhIII failed a clear regulatory standard, but no one is certain what that means anymore at the FDA

Eighteen days ago, virtually all of the outside experts on an FDA adcomm got together to mug the agency’s Billy Dunn and the Biogen team when they presented their upbeat assessment on aducanumab. But here we are, more than 2 weeks later, and the ongoing debate over that Alzheimer’s drug’s fate continues unabated.

Instead of simply ruling out any chance of an approval, the logical conclusion based on what we heard during that session, a series of questionable approvals that preceded the controversy over the agency’s recent EUA decisions has come back to haunt the FDA, where the power of precedent is leaving an opening some experts believe can still be exploited by the big biotech.

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Bob Nelsen (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images)

November 23, 2020 11:52 AM ESTUpdated 02:51 PM

Startups

Bob Nelsen raises $800M and recruits a star-studded board to build the 'Foxconn' of biotech

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

Bob Nelsen spent his pandemic spring in his Seattle home, talking on the phone with Luciana Borio, the scientist who used to run pandemic preparedness on the National Security Council, and fuming with her about the dire state of American manufacturing.

Companies were rushing to develop vaccines and antibodies for the new virus, but even if they succeeded, there was no immediate supply chain or infrastructure to mass-produce them in a way that could make a dent in the outbreak.

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Carl Hansen, AbCellera CEO (University of British Columbia)

November 23, 2020 08:39 AM EST

IPOs

From a pair of Air Jordans to a $200M-plus IPO, Carl Hansen is crafting an overnight R&D fortune fueled by Covid-19

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Back in the summer of 2019, Carl Hansen left his post as a professor at the University of British Columbia to go full time as the CEO at a low-profile antibody shop he had founded called AbCellera.

As biotech CEOs go, even after a fundraise Hansen wasn’t paid a whole heck of a lot. He ended up earning right at $250,000 for the year. His compensation package included a loan — which he later paid back — and a pair of Air Jordan tennis shoes. His newly-hired CFO, Andrew Booth, got a sweeter pay packet than that — which included his own pair of Air Jordans.

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Jason Kelly, Ginkgo Bioworks CEO (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

November 25, 2020 11:48 AM EST

Coronavirus

Manufacturing

After Kodak debacle, US lends $1.1B to a synthetic biology company and their big Covid-19, mRNA plans

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

In mid-August, as Kodak’s $765 million government-backed push into drug manufacturing slowly fell apart in national headlines, Ginkgo Bioworks CEO Jason Kelly got a message from his company’s government liaison: HHS wanted to know if they, too, might want a loan.

The government’s decision to lend Kodak three quarters of a billion dollars raised eyebrows because Kodak had never made drugs before. But Ginkgo, while not a manufacturing company, had spent the last decade refining new ways to produce materials inside cells and building automated facilities across Boston.

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Feng Tian, Ambrx CEO (Ambrx)

November 24, 2020 10:28 AM EST

Venture

Startups

After 5 quiet years, a former Scripps spinout raises $200M and announces plans to try again at an IPO

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

The first time San Diego biotech Ambrx tried to go public in 2014, they failed and the company’s board switched to a radically different strategy: They sold themselves for an undisclosed amount to a syndicate of Chinese investors and pharma companies.

Now, after 5 quiet years, that syndicate has raised a mountain of cash and indicated they’ll soon make another bid to go public.

Earlier this month, Ambrx raised $200 million in what they billed as a crossover round financed by Fidelity, BlackRock, Cormorant Asset Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, Invus, Adage Capital Partners and Suvretta Capital Management. It’s the largest amount they’ve ever raised and, according to Crunchbase figures, more than doubles the total amount of VC capital collected since their launch 17 years ago.