AbbVie is expanding the ophthalmology segment of their pipeline today, bagging a gene therapy now in pivotal trials for wet age-related macular degeneration for a whopping $370 million in cash and adding $1.38 billion in milestone cash as a sweetener. And its new partners at Regenxbio also get support for future trial work.

In exchange, AbbVie gets to take the lead on the global commercialization effort — if it works — along with development work, with Regenxbio $RGNX jumping in alongside in the US.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 118,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

Days of frothy rumors about possible M&A discussions at Acceleron were capped late Friday with a Bloomberg report asserting that the biotech company is in advanced talks for an $11 billion buyout deal.

Bloomberg was unable to identify any bidders in the deal, but speculation has been running rampant that the surging value of Acceleron stock had to be the result of leaks around the auction of the company. As of early Monday morning, we’re still awaiting the final word.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 118,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

As one of the biggest players in an increasingly packed gene therapy space, Pfizer has taken an early lead over specialists like Sarepta in taking a Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) candidate into late-stage testing. But new safety fears have led Pfizer to scale back that trial, cutting out patients with certain genetic mutations.

Pfizer has amended its enrollment protocol for a Phase III test for gene therapy fordadistrogene movaparvovec in DMD after investigators flagged severe side effects tied to specific mutations, according to a letter the drugmaker sent to Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, a patient advocacy group.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 118,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN

One night last fall, Floris Engelhardt sat down in her Boston apartment and logged onto a Zoom call, armed with a comic and a vague idea about starting a biotech.

Engelhardt was joining a student-run “match night.” A postdoc at MIT’s Bathe BioNanoLab, where researchers use DNA and RNA like Lego blocks for nanometer-sized structures, Engelhardt wanted to find real-world applications for her work. She sketched out — literally — a plan to use DNA origami, a decade-old technique for precisely folding DNA, to make therapies.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 118,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

SIGN UP LOG IN