→ A herd of up­start biotechs will look to Wall Street for some ma­jor wind­falls this week as a burst of new of­fer­ings con­tin­ues to feed cash in­to the R&D sys­tem. To­day we learned that Bridge­Bio will look to raise in the neigh­bor­hood of $225 mil­lion by of­fer­ing 15 mil­lion shares for $14 to $16 each. And they have a string of joint bookrun­ners: J.P. Mor­gan, Gold­man Sachs, Jef­feries, SVB Leerink, KKR, Piper Jaf­fray, Mizuho Se­cu­ri­ties, BMO Cap­i­tal Mar­kets and Ray­mond James. If suc­cess­ful, Bridge­Bio will emerge with a mar­ket cap of around $1.7 bil­lion. There are 5 biotechs look­ing to IPO this week, in­clud­ing Akero and Pre­vail.

→ Rockville, MD-based CASI Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has in-li­censed an an­ti-CD19 T cell ther­a­py from Chi­na’s Ju­ven­tas. CASI is mak­ing an $11.6 mil­lion in­vest­ment in Ju­ven­tas in lieu of an up­front pay­ment. They’ll joint­ly con­tin­ue the de­vel­op­ment work.

→ Flex Phar­ma is hav­ing a lit­tle bit of trou­ble in ex­e­cut­ing its re­verse merg­er deal with Salarius Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. The failed biotech $FLKS says it needs to see more votes cast by share­hold­ers af­ter fail­ing to achieve a quo­rum — in per­son or proxy — at a spe­cial meet­ing. Its be­lea­guered shares dropped 24% to a mere 49 cents in pre-mar­ket trad­ing on Mon­day.

→ Ar­bu­tus Bio­phar­ma tapped William Col­lier as its next pres­i­dent and CEO. Col­lier suc­ceeds Mark Mur­ray, who is re­tir­ing on June 23. Col­lier has had over 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try. He served as pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er, North Amer­i­ca at Vi­iV Health­care, in ad­di­tion to a stint at GSK $GSK as well. 

→ Med­ical ge­net­ics com­pa­ny, In­vi­tae Cor­po­ra­tion, is set to ac­quire Sin­gu­lar Bio to help in­crease ac­cess to ge­net­ic screen­ing in ear­ly preg­nan­cy. Sin­gu­lar Bio is “a pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny de­vel­op­ing sin­gle mol­e­cule de­tec­tion tech­nol­o­gy that en­ables low­er costs and ex­pand­ed use of high-qual­i­ty, cell-free nu­cle­ic acid analy­sis, ini­tial­ly for ap­pli­ca­tion in non-in­va­sive pre­na­tal screen­ing (NIPS).”

→ In­cyte $IN­CY on Sat­ur­day pre­sent­ed 24-week re­sults from a mid-stage study of its JAK in­hibitor rux­oli­tinib, which showed the drug met the main goal of in­duc­ing ≥50% im­prove­ment in the fa­cial vi­tili­go. “This 24-week in­ter­val was the first part of a 3-part, 104-week study, and await 52- and 104-week da­ta to con­firm the safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy seen this week­end,” Cred­it Su­isse an­a­lysts wrote in a note. 

→ Calithera $CALA on Mon­day broke out da­ta from a mid-stage study test­ing its glu­t­a­m­i­nase in­hibitor, tela­gle­na­s­tat, in com­bi­na­tion with chemother­a­py everolimus. The tela­gle­na­s­tat com­bi­na­tion achieved a  me­di­an pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival (mPFS) of 3.8 months, while everolimus-treat­ed pa­tients ex­pe­ri­enced mPFS of 1.9 months. “While the top-line da­ta are en­cour­ag­ing, they do ap­pear to have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed vs. ear­li­er Phase I re­sults,” SVB Leerink an­a­lysts wrote in a note. 

→ A 15-month long sweep­ing in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion en­com­pass­ing more than a mil­lion doc­u­ments, thou­sands of hours of se­cret video sur­veil­lance — in­stalled un­der the aus­pices of for­mer CEO Park­er “Pe­te” Pe­tit — and over 80 wit­ness­es, paint­ed a sor­did pic­ture of the scan­dalous past of the wound care com­pa­ny MiMedx in May. Ear­li­er this month, MiMedx begged its share­hold­ers not to fall for ma­ligned Pe­tit’s bid to re­turn to the com­pa­ny’s board, along with two of his busi­ness as­so­ciates. A pre­lim­i­nary vote count sug­gests stock­hold­ers have lis­tened, the com­pa­ny said on Mon­day.

Mesoblast faced rough waters in 2020, but on Monday were thrown a financial lifeline.

The Australian stem cell therapy player has raised $110 million in a private placement, the company announced, offering 60 million shares to the US investor group SurgCenter Development. SurgCenter received the shares at a 6.5% discount from Mesoblast’s closing price on Feb. 25.

Mesoblast plans to use the funds to boost supply of its lead candidate remestemcel-L ahead of what they hope is a potential approval in pediatric GvHD when they return to the FDA, as well as advancing manufacturing and development of their rexlemestrocel-L platform for chronic heart failure and chronic low back pain.

Merck took a big gamble when it opted to jump into the Covid-19 vaccine race late, and made an equally momentous decision to back out in late January. Now, looking to chip in on the effort, Merck reportedly agreed to team up with one of the companies that has already crossed the finish line.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is expected to announce a partnership between drugmakers Merck and Johnson & Johnson to jointly produce J&J’s recombinant protein Covid-19 vaccine that received the FDA’s emergency use authorization Saturday, the Washington Post reported.

FibroGen will likely have to delay its US rollout for roxadustat once again.

In an unexpected move, the FDA is convening its Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee to review the NDA in an advisory committee meeting. The date is yet to be confirmed.

Just a few weeks ago, SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges predicted that the roxa approval could come ahead of the PDUFA date on March 20 — effusive despite already being let down once by the FDA’s extension of its review back in December. AstraZeneca, which is partnered with FibroGen on the chronic kidney disease-related anemia drug, disclosed regulators had requested further clarifying analyses of clinical data.

CRLs. 483s. CBER, CDER and RWE. For biopharma professionals, these acronyms command attention because of the fundamental role FDA plays in drug development. Now Endpoints is doubling down on regulatory coverage, and launching a weekly report focusing on developments out of White Oak, with analysis and insight into what it all means.

Coverage will be led by our new senior editor, Zachary Brennan. He joins Endpoints from POLITICO, where he covered pharma. Prior to that he was the managing editor for Regulatory Focus, a news publication from the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.