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.

A Maryland real estate project has added three new biotech-focused manufacturing and research buildings to an office park to keep up with demand created by the pandemic, the Washington Business Journal reported.

The Milestone Business Park — located off of I-270 in Germantown, MD — will see the new buildings and a total of 532,000 square feet as the campus rebrands to Milestone Innovation Park.

As concerns rise around the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines, global attention is increasingly turning to the little, 33-year-old, productless, bankruptcy-flirting biotech that could: Novavax.

In the now 16-month race to develop and deploy Covid-19 vaccines, Novavax has at times seemed like the pandemic’s most unsuspecting frontrunner and at times like an overhyped also-ran. Although they started the pandemic with only enough cash to last 6 months, they leveraged old connections and believers into $2 billion and emerged last summer with data experts said surpassed Pfizer and Moderna. They unveiled plans to quickly scale to 2 billion doses. Then they couldn’t even make enough material to run their US trial and watched four other companies beat them to the finish line.

The FDA wrapped up its inspection of Emergent’s troubled vaccine manufacturing plant in Baltimore on Tuesday, after halting production there on Monday. By Wednesday morning, the agency already released a series of scathing observations on the cross contamination, sanitary issues and lack of staff training that caused the contract manufacturer to dispose of millions of AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine doses.

Bayer first set roots in Berkeley back in 1974, when it was still operating as Miles Labs. The site has pumped out three hemophilia A treatments for distribution worldwide; but now, as the pharma continues its cell and gene therapy push, it has something bigger in mind.

Bayer is planning a 30-year revamp at the campus, which includes 918,000 square feet in new buildings and double the jobs, according to a report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has tapped 5 new early-stage projects to back with up to $10 million each in fresh investments. The 5 biotechs are:

— Caribou, headed by Rachel Haurwitz and co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, is working on next-gen, off-the-shelf CAR-Ts to replace the patient-derived cells now in use.

— The LLS supported NexImmune’s IPO, helping fund its work on nanoparticles that can gin up an immune response directed at cancer cells. The biotech has 2 projects now in Phase I trials.