Luhan Yang, eGe­n­e­sis

The first crude re­search in­volv­ing xeno­trans­plan­ta­tion goes back to the 1960s, when in­ves­ti­ga­tors first ac­tive­ly con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ties of har­vest­ing or­gans from pri­mates for use in hu­mans. That failed, and sub­se­quent at­tempts run­ning through the mid-90s al­so flopped, with in­com­pat­i­bil­i­ty prov­ing im­pos­si­ble to over­come, while al­so rais­ing some big fears about trans­fer­ring pig virus­es to hu­mans with po­ten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic re­sults.

But George Church and his cel­e­brat­ed team at Har­vard have been us­ing a hot new lab tool to give xeno­trans­plan­ta­tion an­oth­er shot at the re­al world. And now the team has raised $38 mil­lion from some for­ward-think­ing in­vestors to see if yes­ter­day’s sci­ence fic­tion can be­come to­mor­row’s land­mark re­al­i­ty.

Xeno­trans­plan­ta­tion “has been aban­doned for the past 15 years,” says Luhan Yang, an award-win­ning young sci­en­tist who’s the CSO and co-founder at eGe­n­e­sis. But Yang and her 10-mem­ber crew are us­ing CRISPR gene edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy to knock out prob­lem anti­gens to ad­dress the re­jec­tion is­sue while prov­ing in a pre­clin­i­cal set­ting that you can erad­i­cate the prob­lem virus from the pig genome, hope­ful­ly clos­ing the door on any pos­si­ble plague that could be trig­gered.

George Church

Yang says she’s al­ready pub­lished her work show­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties there, but she’s al­so quick to ac­knowl­edge just how ear­ly-stage the pre­clin­i­cal an­i­mal re­search is, and the long road ahead be­fore this can be test­ed in hu­mans.

“We have to see whether the or­gan is safe, com­pat­i­ble with the hu­man host, be­fore we move in­to the pa­tient,” says the CSO. “2017 is a very im­por­tant year for us” as eGe­n­e­sis con­tin­ues its work on Pigs 2.0 to ad­dress both is­sues.

It took some vi­sion­ary VCs will­ing to fund some rad­i­cal ideas to make this pos­si­ble, says Yang. Bio­mat­ics Cap­i­tal and Arch Ven­ture Part­ners co-led the round with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Khosla Ven­tures, Al­ta Part­ners, Alexan­dria Eq­ui­ties, Her­itage Provider Net­work, Berggru­en Hold­ings North Amer­i­ca Ltd., Up­ris­ing, and Fan Ven­tures. In ad­di­tion, Daniel S. Lynch — the for­mer CEO of Im­Clone — has joined eGe­n­e­sis as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man. They’ve be­gun the process of look­ing for a CEO while the team is set to grow to about 15 to 20 now that the new fi­nanc­ing has ar­rived.

I wrote about Bio­mat­ics and its two man­ag­ing part­ners yes­ter­day. They’ve put to­geth­er a $200 mil­lion fund look­ing for some break­through sci­ence to sup­port. And it doesn’t get much more am­bi­tious than this. Arch, mean­while, has prid­ed it­self in bankrolling break­through ideas in biotech. This was tai­lor made for them.

Xeno­trans­plan­ta­tion may sound a lit­tle far-fetched to some, con­cedes Yang. But if they can get this to work, the con­se­quences of farm­ing tis­sue and or­gans like hearts and kid­neys are enor­mous. In her na­tive Chi­na, she says, the cul­ture and re­li­gion make or­gan do­na­tions rare. Xeno­trans­plan­ta­tion would save a large num­ber of lives.

For now, though, the team is keep­ing its time­lines to it­self. How much time will it take to try this in hu­mans? It’s still to ear­ly to say, says Yang, who al­so didn’t want to spec­u­late. But they’ve just tak­en some big steps for­ward with the fi­nanc­ing.

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 mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

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.