John Maraganore and Dou­glas Fam­brough used to be at each oth­er’s throats as Al­ny­lam pur­sued claims that its RNAi ri­vals at Dicer­na had im­prop­er­ly pur­loined the IP it had picked up from Mer­ck in a bar­gain base­ment fire sale.

Dou­glas Fam­brough

But that was all set­tled up close to 2 years ago with a set­tle­ment from Dicer­na’s Fam­brough. And now the two are mov­ing ahead in a close R&D part­ner­ship that makes them col­lab­o­ra­tors on a cou­ple of key dis­ease tar­gets.

In the pact an­nounced this morn­ing, the 2 new al­lies will pool their re­spec­tive RNAi drugs for al­pha-1 liv­er dis­ease, let­ting Dicer­na move ahead on the de­vel­op­ment front to see whether 1, or both, should be ad­vanced through a piv­otal pro­gram. Dicer­na will foot the bill on that ef­fort while Al­ny­lam gains ex-US com­mer­cial rights to what­ev­er comes out the reg­u­la­to­ry side with a win.

Both of these drugs — ALN-AAT02 and DCR-A1AT — are in Phase I/II at the mo­ment.

That puts them be­hind Ar­row­head, which is in a Phase II/III piv­otal with their ri­val and start­ed dos­ing pa­tients in a small mid-stage study late last year fo­cused on pa­tient re­spons­es.

John Maraganore

Then Al­ny­lam and Dicer­na are cross-li­cens­ing drugs for pri­ma­ry hy­per­ox­aluria. That cov­ers Al­ny­lam’s lumasir­an tar­get­ing gly­co­late ox­i­dase for the treat­ment of PH type 1 and Dicer­na’s ne­dosir­an tar­get­ing lac­tate de­hy­dro­ge­nase A for the treat­ment of PH types 1, 2, and 3.

They each are of­fer­ing the oth­er a roy­al­ty stream on glob­al sales.

The al­liance shoves the old dis­pute in­to the his­to­ry books, rel­e­gat­ed now to a chap­ter on IP law­suits. Al­ny­lam had been up­set af­ter watch­ing Mer­ck staffers al­leged­ly make off with the IP they were buy­ing from the phar­ma gi­ant, on­ly to wind up at their ri­val. Dicer­na’s counter-claims spot­light­ed some com­pelling anec­dotes about how eas­i­ly re­search leaked out of Mer­ck af­ter the com­pa­ny de­cid­ed to punt their R&D flop.

Dicer­na claimed that Mer­ck ex­ec­u­tives prac­ti­cal­ly did every­thing but help car­ry suit­cas­es loaded with re­search out the door as they helped line up new jobs for the de­part­ing staffers. And their case de­tailed nu­mer­ous in­stances of just how help­ful they could be.

The first batch of pivotal data on Autolus Therapeutics’ CAR-T is in, and execs are ready to plot a path to market.

With an overall remission rate of 70% at the interim analysis featuring 50 patients, the results set the stage for a BLA filing by the end of 2023, said CEO Christian Itin.

Perhaps more importantly — given that Autolus’ drug, obe-cel, is going after an indication that Gilead’s Tecartus is already approved for — the biotech highlighted “encouraging safety data” in the trial, with a low percentage of patients experiencing severe immune responses.

The FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee will meet next Tuesday to discuss whether Cytokinetics’ potential heart drug can safely reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure in patients with symptomatic chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

The drug, known as omecamtiv mecarbil and in development for more than 15 years, has seen mixed results, with a first Phase III readout from November 2020 hitting the primary endpoint of reducing the odds of hospitalization or other urgent care for heart failure by 8%. But it also missed a key secondary endpoint analysts had pegged as key to breaking into the market.

Add AbbVie to the list of pharma companies currently facing age discrimination allegations.

Pennsylvania resident Thomas Hesch filed suit against AbbVie on Wednesday, accusing the company of passing him over for promotions in favor of younger candidates.

Despite 30 years of pharma experience, “Hesch has consistently seen younger, less qualified employees promoted over him,” the complaint states.