Im­muno­core ap­pears to be the lat­est domi­no to fall around Neil Wood­ford’s de­ba­cle as it so­lic­its new back­ing at a dras­ti­cal­ly low­er val­u­a­tion.

Eliot Forster F-star

Once a star in the UK biotech scene, Im­muno­core fetched $320 mil­lion to launch a sprawl­ing op­er­a­tion around TCR re­search and its val­u­a­tion had once reached near­ly $1 bil­lion (£800m). But that fig­ure has been slashed to around $621 mil­lion (£500 mil­lion) in its lat­est fi­nanc­ing, the Tele­graph re­port­ed.

New York-based Gen­er­al At­lantic has com­mit­ted an ini­tial £60 mil­lion to what is shap­ing up to be a £100 mil­lion round, the news­pa­per added.

Signs of trou­ble at Im­muno­core first emerged well be­fore the Wood­ford fall­out. Eliot Forster hit the ex­it last Feb­ru­ary just as he was sup­pos­ed­ly putting to­geth­er an­oth­er megaround for the com­pa­ny, and an ex­ec­u­tive ex­o­dus fol­lowed. Sev­er­al peo­ple fa­mil­iar with in­ter­nal talks pre­vi­ous­ly told End­points News that the biotech was hav­ing a hard time stick­ing with its high-end uni­corn val­u­a­tion, lead­ing to the de­par­tures.

Bahi­ja Jal­lal

Bahi­ja Jal­lal, for­mer pres­i­dent of the now-de­funct Med­Im­mune unit at As­traZeneca, has since tak­en over as CEO. Re­as­sur­ance to in­vestors and sta­bil­i­ty would be key to her tenure, she said when she joined in Jan­u­ary.

Wood­ford’s high pro­file in­volve­ment with the com­pa­ny didn’t help. A cut in Im­muno­core’s val­u­a­tion could put more strain on Wood­ford as he looks to cash out some pri­vate hold­ings in search of liq­uid­i­ty for his Eq­ui­ty In­come fund, which was abrupt­ly sus­pend­ed back in June. He has vowed to re­open the fund in De­cem­ber — pro­vid­ed he se­cures enough cash to meet any re­demp­tions that dis­grun­tled in­vestors would re­quest once they get the chance.

In an in­ter­im re­port pub­lished in Ju­ly, the fund put the val­ue of its Im­muno­core shares at £23 mil­lion, down from £45 mil­lion at the end of last year.

Adam Stoten Ox­ford

Co-in­vestors have blamed Wood­ford for steep drops in the over­all val­ue of some biotechs their port­fo­lios share with his, as his well-pub­li­cized woes shake oth­ers’ con­fi­dence in com­pa­nies he has stakes in. Most re­cent­ly, Benev­o­len­tAI bagged $90 mil­lion with its val­u­a­tion halved. Ox­ford Nanopore, a DNA se­quenc­ing com­pa­ny, is al­so ap­par­ent­ly be­ing prepped for auc­tion.

Adam Stoten, the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer at Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s spin­out of­fice, said in an in­ter­view with the Tele­graph they are hav­ing to “weath­er the storm” and di­ver­si­fy their in­vestor base af­ter years of re­ceiv­ing in­vest­ment from Wood­ford.

Medical animation has in recent years become an increasingly important tool for conveying niche information to a varied audience, particularly to those audiences without expertise in the specialist area. Science programmes today, for example, have moved from the piece-to-camera of the university professor explaining how a complex disease mechanism works, to actually showing the viewer first-hand what it might look like to shrink ourselves down to the size of an ant’s foot, and travel inside the human body to witness these processes in action. Effectively communicating a complex disease pathophysiology, or the novel mechanism of action of a new drug, can be complex. This is especially difficult when the audience domain knowledge is limited or non-existent. Medical animation can help with this communication challenge in several ways.
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As a potentially powerful flu season looms, so does a big test for Roche and its new flu drug, Xofluza. The Swiss giant just got a small boost in advance of that test as the FDA expanded Xofluza’s indication to include patients at high risk of developing flu-related complications.

Xofluza (baloxavir marboxil) was approved last October in the US, the first landmark flu drug approval in 20 years and a much-needed green light for a company that had watched its leading flu drug Tamiflu get eaten alive by generics. Like its predecessor, the pill offered a reduction in flu symptoms but not a cure.

The first-ever Ebola vaccine is on the precipice of approval after the European Medicine’s Agency (EMA) backed the Merck product in this week’s roster of recommendations.

The drugmaker $MRK began developing the vaccine, christened Ervebo, during the West African outbreak that occurred between 2014 and 2016, killing more than 11,000.

The current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has shown case fatality rates of approximately 67%, the agency estimated. Earlier this year, the WHO declared the outbreak — which so far has infected more than 3,000 people — a public health emergency of international concern.