Ab­b­Vie is arm­ing it­self with an­oth­er set of bow and ar­rows to shoot at BC­MA in mul­ti­ple myelo­ma — and this time it has turned to col­lab­o­ra­tors at Har­poon Ther­a­peu­tics.

In pay­ing $50 mil­lion for an op­tion to li­cense HPN217, Ab­b­Vie gains ex­clu­sive ac­cess to a Tri-spe­cif­ic T cell Ac­ti­vat­ing Con­struct, or Tri­TAC, that is be­ing steered to a Phase I/II tri­al. The dos­ing of the first pa­tient will call for an­oth­er $50 mil­lion in con­tin­gent mile­stone pay­ment. Once Har­poon comes up with the da­ta, its phar­ma gi­ant part­ner will de­cide whether to of­fi­cial­ly add it to the ar­se­nal.

It is an ar­se­nal that al­ready fea­tures a CD3/BC­MA bis­pe­cif­ic from Teneo­bio, a lit­tle known play­er un­til Ab­b­Vie swooped in with $90 mil­lion in cash this Feb­ru­ary. The Sil­i­con Val­ley biotech’s pitch cen­ters on a T cell en­gager plat­form that “in­volves a com­bi­na­tion of a heavy chain on­ly an­ti-BC­MA binder and a nov­el an­ti-CD3 binder, which de­cou­ples tar­get can­cer cell killing from cy­tokine re­lease.”

The re­la­tion­ship with MPM-backed Har­poon dates back to 2017, when Ab­b­Vie dished out $17 mil­lion up­front to kick off some dis­cov­ery ef­forts on the Tri­TAC plat­form. The trans­ac­tion an­nounced to­day can be worth up to $510 mil­lion, the com­pa­nies said.

Na­tal­ie Sacks

“As our pipeline of ini­tial Tri­TAC clin­i­cal can­di­dates ad­vance in prostate and ovar­i­an can­cers, we are thrilled to part­ner with Ab­b­Vie in pur­suit of ther­a­pies geared to­wards hema­to­log­ic can­cers,” Har­poon CMO Na­tal­ie Sacks said in a state­ment.

BC­MA is a par­tic­u­lar­ly hot tar­get for mul­ti­ple myelo­ma, en­tic­ing a swarm of CAR-T de­vel­op­ers like blue­bird and Juno as well as in­spir­ing no­table ef­forts to de­vel­op bis­pecifics by Am­gen and Re­gen­eron. At last count, there were 38 BC­MA-tar­get­ed agents in clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

On top of HPN217, Ab­b­Vie is al­so dou­bling down on the dis­cov­ery front, ex­pand­ing the agree­ment to in­clude two more Tri­TAC mol­e­cules and the op­tion to se­lect up to four ad­di­tion­al tar­gets. Each se­lect­ed tar­get could earn Har­poon up to $310 mil­lion in to­tal.

Pfizer and BioNTech said Friday that they’ve submitted a biologics license application to the FDA for full approval of their mRNA vaccine for those over the age of 16.

How long it will take the FDA to decide on the BLA will be set once it’s been formally accepted by the agency.

Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, previously told Endpoints News that the review of the BLA should take between three and four months, but it may be even faster than that.

The tumultuous ride for Orphazyme continued on Friday as the company announced that a pivotal trial for its lead drug arimoclomol failed yet again, this time in the treatment of ALS, seeding doubt in a drug that had recently been cleared by the FDA for priority review. The latest failure casts a darker shadow on the upcoming decision despite Orphazyme’s upbeat outlook.

In a statement, the Danish biotech announced that the drug did not meet its primary or secondary endpoints evaluating function and survival. But the company has not announced any data surrounding the failure, instead saying that it will publish the complete results later this year.

One in a string of lawsuits targeting copay charity foundations, the DOJ has been hunting drugmaker Incyte for what prosecutors alleged was a kickback scheme to court patients. Now, Incyte is clearing its name.

Incyte will shell out $12.6 million to settle claims it funneled funds through a charity foundation to cover federal copays for patients taking its JAK inhibitor Jakafi, the DOJ said this week.

Like many who work in biopharma, Richard Paulson got started in the field because of a love of science.

Paulson had just finished business school and was looking to start a career that married his two passions. While looking for jobs, he thought of his grandmother who had struggled with Alzheimer’s disease, recalling how he saw first-hand what innovative medicines can do for patients. Ultimately, he started his first job in the space as a sales rep at Glaxo Wellcome, one of GlaxoSmithKline’s predecessors before its merger with SmithKline Beecham in 2000.