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.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.