In Au­gust, Chi­nook merged with the strug­gling Aduro to take on the com­pa­ny’s pipeline pro­grams for kid­ney dis­ease re­search. Mon­day, Chi­nook an­nounced that Aduro will take on a new name: Sairopa.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced a par­tial sale to Van Herk In­vest­ments, a Eu­ro­pean life sci­ence in­vestor, to cre­ate a new com­pa­ny called Sairopa that will fo­cus on the R&D of non-re­nal mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies that were gen­er­at­ed through Aduro’s B-Se­lect plat­form. As a part of the deal, Chi­nook will re­lin­quish con­trol of all the as­sets it ac­quired from Aduro.

Er­ic Dob­meier

“These are not core as­sets to Chi­nook go­ing for­ward, and so this is a nice way to give them life on their own,” CEO Er­ic Dob­meier said.

The move helps Dob­meier stream­line things, and op­er­ate as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble, he said. The com­pa­ny is fo­cused on kid­ney re­search, and by tak­ing these an­ti­body as­sets and putting them un­der a new um­brel­la, Chi­nook will re­ceive 40% eq­ui­ty stake but al­low the Sairopa sci­en­tists to fo­cus their ef­forts there.

“It’s a great way for us to be able to get these as­sets an op­por­tu­ni­ty to suc­ceed, but al­so not get dis­tract­ed and be able to fo­cus on kid­ney dis­ease,” Dob­meier said in a call Mon­day. “We think it’s a win-win.”

The spin­off comes af­ter a bru­tal stretch for Aduro. Ear­ly in 2019, CEO Stephen Isaacs was forced to se­vere­ly re­struc­ture and down­size the staff, cut­ting 37% of the work­force and watched the biotech’s stocks dwin­dle.

Aduro can­di­dates in the Stim­u­la­tor of In­ter­fer­on Genes (STING) and A Pro­lif­er­a­tion In­duc­ing Lig­and (APRIL) path­ways have been in­ves­ti­gat­ed in can­cer, au­toim­mune and in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­eases. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny had a list of set­backs, which in­clud­ed No­var­tis dump­ing its col­lab­o­ra­tion with Aduro on STING in 2019.

Orig­i­nal­ly, there were two sep­a­rate STING pro­grams: in­tra­tu­moral STING and sys­temic STING. No­var­tis had put the in­tra­tu­moral pro­gram on hold last year but con­tin­ued R&D on the sys­temic pro­gram. Mon­day, No­var­tis an­nounced that they would no longer be col­lab­o­rat­ing on this pro­gram ei­ther.

“Frankly, from our point of view, (that) stream­lines things,” Dob­meier said. “It’s un­for­tu­nate for the pro­gram, but it will be made eas­i­er to fo­cus go­ing for­ward on kid­ney dis­ease.”

And in late 2018,  J&J backed out of its lis­te­ria tech for lung and prostate can­cer.

Chi­nook will own about 40% of Sairopa and have one seat on the com­pa­ny’s board of di­rec­tors, ac­cord­ing to the re­lease. Chi­nook will al­so as­sume Aduro’s col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ments with Eli Lil­ly and Mer­ck, and briefly as­sumed the agree­ment with No­var­tis be­fore the end of the col­lab­o­ra­tion was an­nounced.

As a part of Chi­nook’s Oc­to­ber 2020 merg­er with Aduro, stock­hold­ers re­ceived one CVR for each out­stand­ing share.

David Livingston, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Med scientist who helped shine a light on some of the key molecular drivers of breast and ovarian cancer, died unexpectedly last Sunday.

One of the senior leaders at Dana-Farber during his nearly half century of work there, Livingston was credited with shedding light on the genes that regulate cell growth, with insights into inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that helped lay the scientific foundation for targeted therapies and earlier detection that have transformed the field.

Just as Avoro Capital’s campaign to derail Merck’s proposed $11.5 billion buyout of Acceleron gains steam, Bristol Myers Squibb is leaning in with some hefty counterweight.

The pharma giant is planning to tender its Acceleron shares, Bloomberg reported, which add up to a sizable 11.5% stake. Based on the offer price, the sale would net Bristol Myers around $1.3 billion.

To complete its deal, Merck needs a majority of shareholders to agree to sell their shares.

Three Senate Democrats are backing an FDA plan to require mandatory prescriber education for opioids as overdose deaths have risen sharply over the past decade, with almost 97,000 American opioid-related overdose deaths in the past year alone.

While acknowledging a decline in overall opioid analgesic dispensing in recent years, the FDA said it’s reconsidering the need for mandatory prescriber training through a REMS given the current situation with overdoses, and is seeking input on the aspects of the opioid crisis that mandatory training could potentially mitigate.