Ear­li­er in Jan­u­ary, De­ci­phera out­lined plans for a new Phase III study of its ty­ro­sine ki­nase in­hibitor Qin­lock, still hop­ing to move it in­to an ear­li­er line of treat­ment for di­ges­tive tract can­cer af­ter it failed a piv­otal tri­al in 2021.

But in or­der to run a new clin­i­cal tri­al, De­ci­phera needs cash. So the Waltham, MA biotech is sell­ing its shares via a pub­lic of­fer­ing, it an­nounced Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

De­ci­phera plans to sell $125 mil­lion of its shares, and it’s giv­ing un­der­writ­ers an op­tion to buy an ad­di­tion­al $18.75 mil­lion.

De­ci­phera’s stock $DCPH, which closed at $20.61 Wednes­day, fell around 10% in pre-mar­ket trad­ing in re­sponse.

Qin­lock was ap­proved in 2020 for fourth-line gas­troin­testi­nal stro­mal tu­mors, or GISTs, and De­ci­phera had hoped to turn it in­to a sec­ond-line treat­ment op­tion. But Qin­lock failed a Phase III tri­al ver­sus stan­dard-of-care suni­tinib, and soon af­ter, De­ci­phera scrapped parts of its pipeline and cut 140 staffers.

But in Jan­u­ary, De­ci­phera said it found a new way to ex­pand Qin­lock’s la­bel. De­ci­phera did a sub­group analy­sis of 52 pa­tients with mu­ta­tions in KIT ex­on 11 and 17/18, a gene that en­codes for the ki­nase Qin­lock blocks. In that sub­group, pa­tients who got Qin­lock had a me­di­an PFS of 14.2 months, com­pared to 1.5 months for those on suni­tinib. The new Phase III tri­al will test Qin­lock as a sec­ond-line treat­ment for pa­tients with those KIT mu­ta­tions on­ly.

Out­side of the new clin­i­cal tri­al, De­ci­phera al­so said that the mon­ey will be used to fund work on its oth­er ki­nase in­hibitors, in­clud­ing vim­sel­tinib, which is in a Phase III tri­al for tenosyn­ovial gi­ant cell tu­mor, a type of joint tu­mor, and DCC-3116, which is in ear­ly-stage stud­ies.

New York City is investing $20 million in biotech this year in the form of a 50,000-square-foot “innovation space” at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, complete with offices, research laboratories and events and programming space to grow biotech startups and companies.

Mayor Eric Adams said during his State of The City Address last Thursday that there will be an “emphasis” on making more opportunities for women and people of color to further diversify the industry. The City first reported the news.

Boehringer Ingelheim uncorked some positive results suggesting that Spevigo can help prevent flare-ups in patients with a severe form of psoriasis, months after the drug was approved to treat existing flares.

Spevigo, an IL-36R antibody also known as spesolimab, met its primary and a key secondary endpoint in the Phase IIb EFFISAYIL 2 trial in patients with generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP), Boehringer announced on Monday. While the company is keeping the hard numbers under wraps until later this year, it said in a news release that it anticipates sharing the results with regulators.

AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi won an appeals court win on Monday, as the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found that the companies cannot be forced to provide 340B-discounted drugs purchased by hospitals from an unlimited number of community and specialty pharmacies.

“Legal duties do not spring from silence,” the decision says as the court makes clear that the federal government’s interpretation of the “supposed requirement” that the 340B program compels drugmakers to supply their discounted drugs to an unlimited number of contract pharmacies is not correct, noting:

A US appeals court has ruled against Johnson & Johnson’s use of bankruptcy to deal with mounting talc lawsuits, deciding that doing so would “create a legal blind spot.”

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a previous bankruptcy court decision on Monday, calling for the dismissal of a Chapter 11 filing by J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management.

Faced with more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging its talc-based products caused cancer, J&J spun its talc liabilities into a separate company called LTL Management back in October 2021 and filed for bankruptcy, a controversial move colloquially referred to as a “Texas two-step” bankruptcy. Claimants argued that the strategy is a misuse of the US bankruptcy code — and on Monday, a panel of judges agreed.