A lit­tle more than 3 years ago Al­ler­gan paid $90 mil­lion in a cash up­front to part­ner with gene edit­ing play­er Ed­i­tas on a CRISPR al­liance fo­cused on the eye. The lead pro­gram cen­tered on LCA10, a rare, in­her­it­ed reti­nal de­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease that ap­pears in child­hood and leads to blind­ness.

Al­ler­gan then went to Ab­b­Vie $AB­BV in a buy­out, and the phar­ma gi­ant has no in­ter­est in mov­ing for­ward on the gene edit­ing front. The com­pa­ny punt­ed it all back to Ed­i­tas Thurs­day, with the biotech $ED­IT not­ing in a state­ment af­ter the mar­ket closed Thurs­day that it is re­gain­ing all rights for its oc­u­lar med­i­cines, in­clud­ing ED­IT-101.

Cyn­thia Collins

Ed­i­tas CEO Cyn­thia Collins says she’s “pleased” to get the pro­grams back un­en­cum­bered. She added:

“We are cur­rent­ly fo­cused on ad­vanc­ing ED­IT-101 with dos­ing re­sumed in the Phase 1/2 BRIL­LIANCE clin­i­cal tri­al. We re­main on track to com­plete dos­ing of the adult low-dose co­hort and to dose at least one pa­tient of the adult mid-dose co­hort by the end of this year. We look for­ward to shar­ing ad­di­tion­al up­dates from BRIL­LIANCE clin­i­cal tri­al and oth­er med­i­cines in de­vel­op­ment in our oc­u­lar pro­gram lat­er this year.”

The biotech’s stock, which had jumped 13% dur­ing reg­u­lar trad­ing hours Thurs­day, im­me­di­ate­ly turned south and dropped 11% af­ter the bell.

Brent Saun­ders

This is a high-pro­file pi­o­neer­ing clin­i­cal ef­fort. Back in March Ed­i­tas and Al­ler­gan spot­light­ed the first use of CRISPR in an in vi­vo hu­man sub­ject, the first time re­searchers had used the tech­nol­o­gy to ed­it a cell — rather than do­ing the edit­ing ex-vi­vo and then re­turn cells to the sub­ject.

But Al­ler­gan CEO Brent Saun­ders nev­er got much cred­it for his R&D deals, as en­thu­si­as­tic as he was about them. Ab­b­Vie’s big in­ter­est was amp­ing up rev­enue from the leg­endary Botox fran­chise, not break­ing new ground with CRISPR.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Novartis’ sickle cell drug, approved in 2019 and branded as Adakveo, has failed an ongoing Phase III, according to preliminary results.

The Swiss pharma giant unveiled early data from the ongoing STAND Phase III study on Friday, saying that crizanlizumab showed no statistically significant difference between the drug at two different dose levels compared to placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises that lead to a healthcare visit over the first year since being randomized into the trial.

Merck’s blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda has been handed another indication by the FDA.

The US regulator announced on Thursday that it has approved Keytruda to serve as an adjuvant treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is its fifth indication in NSCLC and 34th indication overall.

According to a Merck release, the approval is based on data from a Phase III trial, dubbed Keynote-091, which measured disease-free survival in patients who received chemotherapy following surgery. The data from Merck displayed that Keytruda cut down on the risk of disease recurrence or death by 27% versus placebo.

Israeli biotech Sol-Gel Technologies announced Friday that it got its hands on a rare disease drug candidate from PellePharm for almost $75 million, amid claims that the drug has the potential to reach a $300 million market.

Execs said on a conference call Friday morning that patidegib, a hedgehog signaling pathway blocker, is being investigated to treat Gorlin syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that increases the risk of developing certain kinds of cancer such as basal cell skin cancer and medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer. The disease affects around one in every 31,000 people, and an estimated 70,000 people worldwide.

J&J and Legend Biotech’s next step in turning their CAR-T therapy Carvykti into a potential megablockbuster has succeeded, the companies said Friday.

Carvykti achieved the primary endpoint — progression-free survival — in an open-label Phase III study testing the treatment in second- to fourth-line multiple myeloma patients. The CARTITUDE-4 trial, for which there aren’t any hard data yet, represents the biggest development for Carvykti’s ability to compete with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Abecma since its approval last February.