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

After making it through a long, painful haul to get past a CRL and on to an FDA approval last summer, little Chiasma has found a buyer.

Amryt $AMYT, a company known for its appetite for acquiring expensive drugs for rare diseases at bargain prices, snagged Chiasma and its acromegaly drug Mycapssa (octreotide) capsules in an all-stock deal — with an exchange of 0.396 shares of Amryt for every share of Chiasma.

The FDA’s Arthritis Advisory Committee on Thursday voted 10 for and 8 against the approval of ChemoCentryx’s $CCXI investigational drug avacopan as a treatment for adults with a rare and serious disease known as anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody (ANCA)-vasculitis.

The vote on whether the FDA should approve the drug was preceded by a split vote of 9 to 9 on whether the efficacy data support approval, and 10 to 8 that the safety profile of avacopan is adequate enough to support approval.

Most deals in biotech come with hefty upfront payments attached, and the promise of big biobucks if a program works out. Not this one.

Nkarta has struck what CEO Paul Hastings calls a “real collaboration” with CRISPR Therapeutics to co-develop and commercialize two CAR-NK therapies, in addition to an NK+T program. The duo will split all R&D costs — and any worldwide profits — 50/50, Hastings said.

As if Biogen’s aducanumab isn’t controversial enough, the researchers at drug pricing watchdog ICER have drawn up the contours of a new debate: If the therapy does get approved for Alzheimer’s by June, what price should it command?

Their answer: At most $8,290 per year — and perhaps as little as $2,560.

Even at the top of the range, the proposed price is a fraction of the $50,000 that Wall Street has reportedly come to expect (although RBC analyst Brian Abrahams puts the consensus figure at $11.5K). With critics, including experts on the FDA’s advisory committee, making their fierce opposition to aducanumab’s approval loud and clear, the pricing pressure adds one extra wrinkle Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos doesn’t need as he orders full-steam preparation for a launch.