When Adri­an Raw­cliffe of­fi­cial­ly steps in­to the CEO role at Adap­ti­m­mune in a few days, he will have a new part­ner­ship to ex­e­cute in one of his first ef­forts to shore up some en­thu­si­asm for its T cell ther­a­py pro­grams.

Adri­an Raw­cliffe

In a $312 mil­lion pact, the US-UK hy­brid biotech has en­list­ed Noile-Im­mune for a next-gen­er­a­tion project that will boost Adap­ti­m­mune’s SPEAR T cells with the Japan­ese com­pa­ny’s PRIME plat­form. In ad­di­tion to the re­cep­tors en­gi­neered in­to the T cells, the re­sult­ing prod­uct would be armed with the cy­tokines IL-7 and CCL19.

Noile-Im­mune has been ap­ply­ing their tech­nol­o­gy — in­vent­ed by Ko­ji Tama­da of Ya­m­aguchi Uni­ver­si­ty — to CAR-T cells, pre­vi­ous­ly ink­ing a co-de­vel­op­ment deal with Take­da.

Not on­ly does PRIME make the en­gi­neered cells more po­tent, it may al­so en­hance the abil­i­ty of the pa­tient’s na­tive T cells to fight sol­id tu­mors, ac­cord­ing to Karen Miller, Adap­ti­m­mune’s SVP of pipeline re­search.

Karen Miller

“We re­cent­ly start­ed our Phase 2 tri­al in sar­co­ma called SPEAR­HEAD-1 as well as the SUR­PASS tri­al, our first next-gen­er­a­tion prod­uct clin­i­cal tri­al. We will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op en­hanced prod­ucts with the aim of in­creas­ing the ef­fi­ca­cy and dura­bil­i­ty of an­ti-tu­mor re­spons­es,” she added in a state­ment.

It’s crunch time for Adap­ti­m­mune. Once a dar­ling in the I/O crowd with a bud­ding TCR tech, its sup­port on Wall Street has been wan­ing since its $191 mil­lion pub­lic de­but in 2015, which in turn fol­lowed a high pro­file $350 mil­lion col­lab­o­ra­tion with Glax­o­SmithK­line. The stock opened at $1.47 to­day, a pre­cip­i­tous fall from last fall’s peak of $13.9. As founder James No­ble pass­es the reins to CFO Raw­cliffe — a GSK vet — the theme now is to make things hap­pen.

Adap­ti­m­mune will now work with Noile-Im­mune on pre­clin­i­cal work around a num­ber of tar­gets, with a goal to en­ter the clin­ic by 2021. That will all hap­pen un­der a new CMO and R&D pres­i­dent af­ter Rafael Ama­do hit the ex­it ear­li­er this month.

At last count the com­pa­ny had about $35 mil­lion in cash on hand and $133 mil­lion in liq­uid­i­ty, giv­ing it a run­way that ex­tends in­to the third quar­ter of next year.

So­cial im­age cred­it: Navy Yard

While Novartis painstakingly works to mop up the stench of the data manipulation scandal associated with its expensive gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) Zolgensma— rival Biogen is attempting to expand the use of its SMA therapy, Spinraza. 

The US drugmaker $BIIB secured US approval for Spinraza for use in the often fatal genetic disease in 2016. The approval covered a broad range of patients with infantile-onset (most likely to develop Type 1) SMA. 

After months of buzz from both sides of the aisle, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will today introduce her plan to allow the federal government to negotiate prices for 250 prescription drugs, setting up a showdown with a pharmaceutical industry working overtime to prevent it.

The need to limit drug prices is a rare point of agreement between President Trump and Democrats, although the president has yet to comment on the proposal and will likely face pressure to back a more conservative option or no bill at all. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is reportedly lobbying his fellow party members on a more modest proposal he negotiated with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden in July.

Jeffrey Kindler’s plan to take his biotech — which is developing a slate of non-opioid painkillers — public, is back on.

The Boston based company, led by former Pfizer $PFE chief Kindler, originally contemplated a $70 million to $80 million IPO last year— but eventually postponed that strategy. On Wednesday, the company revived its bid to make a public debut in a filing with the SEC — although no pricing details were disclosed.

It was the cellular equivalent of opening your car door and finding an active, roaring engine in the driver seat.

Scientists learned strands of DNA could occasionally appear outside of its traditional home in the nucleus in the 1970s, when they appeared as little, innocuous circles on microscopes; inexplicable but apparently innate. But not until UC San Diego’s Paul Mischel published his first study in Science in 2014 did researchers realize these circles were not only active but potentially overactive and driving some cancer tumors’ superhuman growth.

As Themis gears up for a Phase III trial of its chikungunya vaccine, the Vienna-based biotech has closed out €40 million ($44 million) to foot the clinical and manufacturing bills.

Its heavyweight partners at Merck — which signed a pact around a mysterious “blockbuster indication” last month — jumped into the Series D, led by new investors Farallon Capital and Hadean Ventures. Adjuvant Capital also joined, as did current investors Global Health Investment Fund, aws Gruenderfonds, Omnes Capital, Ventech and Wellington Partners Life Sciences.