A few days af­ter Am­gen chart­ed a Phase III map for an up-and-com­ing car­dio drug, the biotech be­hind its de­vel­op­ment has de­cid­ed to cash out.

Ar­row­head Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals an­nounced Wednes­day morn­ing that it has sold its roy­al­ty stake in ol­pasir­an, a siR­NA drug de­vel­oped in-house, to Roy­al­ty Phar­ma for $250 mil­lion in up­front cash, plus an­oth­er $160 mil­lion in mile­stones. The sale rep­re­sents all of Ar­row­head’s roy­al­ties in the pro­gram, though the biotech kept the rights to pos­si­ble down­stream mile­stones from Am­gen, worth up to an­oth­er $400 mil­lion.

In a pre­pared state­ment, Ar­row­head CEO Chris An­za­lone said the new cash in­fu­sion will help the com­pa­ny in­vest back in­to its RNAi plat­form and fur­ther pipeline pro­grams.

Ar­row­head li­censed ol­pasir­an to Am­gen back in Sep­tem­ber 2016, when the big bio­phar­ma shelled out $35 mil­lion in cash up­front and in­vest­ed an­oth­er $21.5 mil­lion in eq­ui­ty, as part of two car­dio deals. At the time, Am­gen promised Ar­row­head up to $617 mil­lion in mile­stones and low dou­ble-dig­it roy­al­ties on lipopro­tein(a)-re­duc­ing pro­grams — ol­pasir­an’s tar­get.

Wednes­day’s news comes af­ter Am­gen re­port­ed ex­tend­ed Phase II da­ta at the AHA An­nu­al Meet­ing over the week­end, show­ing how ol­pasir­an, in 281 pa­tients, in­duced a 95% or greater re­duc­tion in Lp(a) com­pared to place­bo af­ter about eight months. The re­sults have giv­en Am­gen fur­ther con­fi­dence in a Phase III pro­gram, ex­pect­ed to kick off next month.

For Roy­al­ty Phar­ma, the move falls right in­to line with its busi­ness mod­el, pay­ing out hefty sums for fu­ture roy­al­ties to cash-needy biotechs. The re­cent down­turn has fu­eled bil­lion­aire Pablo Legor­re­ta’s niche in­dus­try this year, as the bear mar­ket ham­mered the biotech sec­tor and tra­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing av­enues closed up.

But Roy­al­ty has al­so in­vest­ed in some R&D, team­ing up with Mer­ck last month on a Phase IIb schiz­o­phre­nia drug for $50 mil­lion up­front. If every­thing goes well in that study — not a sure thing, giv­en the his­to­ry of the field — then Roy­al­ty would spend an­oth­er $375 mil­lion to help fund the piv­otal tri­al.

The FDA hasn’t detected any potential safety signals, including for stroke, in people aged 65 years and older who have received Pfizer’s bivalent Covid booster, one senior official told members of the agency’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Thursday.

The update comes as the FDA and CDC investigate a “preliminary signal” that may indicate an increased risk of ischemic stroke in older Americans who received Pfizer’s updated shot.

The FDA has stopped use of another drug as a result of the new coronavirus variants. On Thursday, the agency announced that AstraZeneca’s antibody combo Evusheld, which was an important prevention option for many immunocompromised people and others, is no longer authorized.

The FDA said it made its decision based on the fact that Evusheld works on fewer than 10% of circulating variants.

Evusheld was initially given emergency authorization at the end of 2021. However, as Omicron emerged, so did studies that showed Evusheld might not work against the dominant Omicron strain. In October, the FDA warned healthcare providers that Evusheld was useless against the Omicron subvariant BA.4.6. It followed that up with another announcement earlier this month that it did not think Evusheld would work against the latest Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.

Magenta Therapeutics is pausing an early-stage clinical trial after a patient died. The death was deemed to be possibly related to its drug, MGTA-117.

The biotech said the pause of the Phase I/II trial is voluntary and gives it time to review all available data before deciding what to do next. It’s also reported the known information to the FDA.

The dose-escalation trial was designed to test whether MGTA-117, an antibody-drug conjugate, could serve as a more targeted alternative to high-intensity chemotherapy as a conditioning agent for cancer patients who are set to receive a stem cell transplant. It recruited patients with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome.

Regeneron has won a patent case against Swiss pharma giant Novartis over the delivery system for its eye drug Eylea.

The US Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled that Novartis’ pre-filled syringe for injecting its eye medication Lucentis was “unpatentable” and handed the victory to Regeneron and its AMD drug Eylea.

In the initial complaint in 2020, Novartis alleged to the US International Trade Commission that certain pre-filled syringes for the intravitreal injection, and ultimately Regeneron’s delivery system for Eylea, were infringing on Novartis’ patent. Regeneron filed a petition to review Novartis’ claims in 2021.