→ Frances Arnold from the Cal­i­for­nia In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy will share this year’s No­bel prize for chem­istry. Her work on the “di­rect­ed evo­lu­tion” of en­zymes of­fered a new ap­proach to be­spoke cat­a­lysts for new chem­i­cal re­ac­tions, set­ting up an ad­vance that has played a role in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals as well as re­new­able en­er­gy. She is be­ing rec­og­nized along­side George Smith and Sir Gre­go­ry Win­ter, who played a pi­o­neer­ing role in phage dis­play, which has had a ma­jor im­pact on the de­vel­op­ment of an­ti­bod­ies.

→ Look­ing for a fol­low-on to its ground­break­ing CAR-T ther­a­py, Kite Phar­ma has signed on the cell screen­ing ex­perts at Hi­FiBiO Ther­a­peu­tics to take a deep look in­to neoanti­gen-re­ac­tive T cell re­cep­tors. The Gilead sub­sidiary is pay­ing $10 mil­lion for ac­cess and a right to li­cense Hi­FiBiO’s tech plat­form, which has ca­pac­i­ty for “in-depth screen­ing of TCR reper­toires from pa­tient sam­ples to iden­ti­fy shared anti­gen and neoanti­gen TCRs for use in adop­tive cel­lu­lar ther­a­pies.”

→ Twist Bio­science, a man­u­fac­tur­er and sup­pli­er of syn­thet­ic DNA, is seek­ing an $86 mil­lion IPO. Oth­er than up­dat­ing the plat­form and ex­pand­ing its sales op­er­a­tions — which cur­rent­ly boasts of 600 bio­phar­ma, ag and tech clients — the San Fran­cis­co-based com­pa­ny al­so plans to spend its pro­ceeds on a man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Chi­na.

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

San Francisco-based biotech 89bio announced on Friday that it expects to rake in $275 million on a stock offering. The raise comes after 89bio announced on Tuesday results of a Phase II study showing that its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH.

To run a Phase III study, 89bio CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News that the biotech “would need to raise additional capital.” 89bio offered over 16 million shares of its common stock at $16.25 per share, and expects the offering closes on March 28.