Be­set with set­backs, a once cash-poor Agenus had some­thing to cheer late last year when be­he­moth Gilead signed on as a part­ner on up to five of its im­muno-on­col­o­gy pro­grams. On Tues­day, the biotech of­fered in­vestors an in­trigu­ing pro­pos­al: fund the de­vel­op­ment of a sin­gle drug, while pre­serv­ing share­hold­er eq­ui­ty.

In per­haps the first in­stance of a bio­phar­ma com­pa­ny con­duct­ing such a ‘dig­i­tal se­cu­ri­ty’ of­fer­ing, Agenus said it was launch­ing a to­ken  de­signed to en­able qual­i­fied in­vestors to di­rect­ly in­vest in a sin­gle biotech prod­uct – in this case, the to­kens is­sued will rep­re­sent a por­tion of po­ten­tial fu­ture US sales of AGEN2034, Agenus’ late-stage an­ti-PD-1 an­ti­body.

Biren Amin

“I have nev­er seen this type of arrange­ment. I think there may be lim­i­ta­tions in terms of par­tic­i­pa­tion from in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors who may not be able to par­tic­i­pate,” Jef­feries’ Biren Amin, who cov­ers Agenus $AGEN, told End­points News.

The Agenus to­ken is pow­ered by blockchain tech­nol­o­gy, which was was in­vent­ed by an uniden­ti­fied de­vel­op­er in 2008 to pow­er Bit­coin, but is now used across a num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions. Es­sen­tial­ly, it is a se­quence of blocks or groups of trans­ac­tions that are chained to­geth­er and dis­trib­uted among users, map­ping an un­al­ter­able record of trans­ac­tions that are not de­pen­dent on an ex­ter­nal au­thor­i­ty to val­i­date da­ta.

In­vestors will be el­i­gi­ble to pur­chase the Agenus’ to­kens un­der pre­ferred terms in the ini­tial stage of the of­fer­ing, which is slat­ed for mid-Feb­ru­ary. The Lex­ing­ton, MA-based com­pa­ny ex­pects to raise up to $100 mil­lion to de­vel­op and sell AGEN2034.

“Agenus an­tic­i­pates the in­dus­try will adopt this fi­nanc­ing mod­el as an at­trac­tive means of ob­tain­ing cap­i­tal in com­ing years. BEST (Agenus’ to­ken) is ex­pect­ed to lead to the emer­gence of a new mar­ket­place for as­set-spe­cif­ic se­cu­ri­ties pro­vid­ing in­vestors with unique fund­ing al­ter­na­tives and op­tions for man­ag­ing risk,” the can­cer drug de­vel­op­er said in a state­ment on Tues­day.

Brad Lon­car, chief ex­ec­u­tive of Lon­car In­vest­ments which runs the Lon­car Can­cer Im­munother­a­py ETF, sug­gest­ed a num­ber of peo­ple in the in­dus­try were work­ing on such fund­ing arrange­ments.

“Set­ting aside the specifics of this Agenus PD-1, I do think the con­cept has po­ten­tial. It would al­low com­pa­nies to raise funds for sin­gle as­sets with­in their pipelines and for in­vestors to back in­di­vid­ual projects. It’s a very unique and ap­peal­ing con­cept.”

But the fresh ap­proach to fund­ing comes with fresh ques­tions. For in­stance, gov­er­nance. “These would all be in­di­vid­ual se­cu­ri­ties so how do you en­sure there is ap­pro­pri­ate in­vestor ed­u­ca­tion and trans­paren­cy through­out the drugs’ de­vel­op­ment?,” Lon­car said.

Then there is the ques­tion about liq­uid­i­ty. “These are like­ly to be small projects so it re­mains to be seen if these will be liq­uid as­sets that are priced ef­fi­cient­ly,” Lon­car not­ed, adding that if in­vestors elect to sell to­kens they will pre­sum­ably do so on the sec­ondary mar­ket like any oth­er to­ken.

There are a laun­dry list of oth­er hy­po­thet­i­cals to pon­der: since each to­ken will rep­re­sent a slice of fu­ture US sales of AGEN2034, what hap­pens if the drug is re­ject­ed? In con­trast, if the drug is ap­proved, what im­pact does this strat­e­gy have on any po­ten­tial part­ner­ships Agenus may want to ink in or­der to com­mer­cial­ize?

End­points has con­tact­ed Agenus for com­ment.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.