Months af­ter los­ing long­time part­ner Am­gen on its lead heart drug, Cy­to­ki­net­ics is wav­ing good­bye to an­oth­er al­ly — and with it, more than $450 mil­lion in po­ten­tial mile­stones.

Cy­to­ki­net­ics said in an SEC fil­ing last week that Astel­las is of­fi­cial­ly walk­ing away from a pact to re­search skele­tal sar­com­ere ac­ti­va­tors for dis­eases as­so­ci­at­ed with mus­cle weak­ness. The com­pa­nies had ex­tend­ed the re­search term of their part­ner­ship — which was ini­tial­ly set to ex­pire on Dec. 31 — through March of this year to fin­ish work they couldn’t get done dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Cy­to­ki­net­ics CEO Robert Blum told End­points News. But on April 27, Astel­las gave writ­ten no­tice that it’s hit­ting the ex­it.

Ac­cord­ing to the fil­ing, Astel­las is giv­ing up “all li­cens­es and oth­er rights” grant­ed through the pact.

The re­search, de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion pact was ini­tial­ly struck back in 2013. But in April 2020, Astel­las re­turned the rights to relde­sem­tiv, Cy­to­ki­net­ics’ can­di­date to treat mus­cle wast­ing, and oth­er fast skele­tal reg­u­la­to­ry ac­ti­va­tor (FS­RA) com­pounds that were sub­ject to the orig­i­nal agree­ment. Astel­las agreed to pay one-third of the out-of-pock­et costs for Cy­to­ki­net­ics’ con­tin­ued Phase III tri­al for the drug in ALS, in re­turn for “low- to mid-sin­gle dig­it” roy­al­ties in the US, Cana­da, UK and EU for ei­ther 10 years af­ter the first sale, or un­til 2034, ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing.

“The re­search pro­gram that was ex­tend­ed was done with joint agree­ment, just so we could wind down on a cou­ple of mat­ters that we agreed we want­ed to put to bed be­fore we stepped away,” Blum said. “We joint­ly de­cid­ed that we were go­ing to fin­ish the re­search to­geth­er, and then go our sep­a­rate ways.”

End­points reached out to Astel­las, but did not re­ceive a re­sponse as of press time.

Cy­to­ki­net­ics is left with­out the op­por­tu­ni­ty to scoop up some ma­jor mile­stones laid out in the orig­i­nal deal. Ac­cord­ing to the deal, Astel­las could have nabbed ex­clu­sive rights to co-de­vel­op and sell the skele­tal sar­com­ere ac­ti­va­tors in all in­di­ca­tions, leav­ing Cy­to­ki­net­ics the right to co-pro­mote and do cer­tain sales work in the US, Cana­da and/or Eu­rope “un­der agreed sce­nar­ios.”

If Astel­las want­ed to take any of the can­di­dates for­ward on its own, it would have owed Cy­to­ki­net­ics $25 to $35 mil­lion per prod­uct, plus up to $250 mil­lion more for all prod­ucts and an­oth­er $200 mil­lion in com­mer­cial mile­stones. On top of all that, Cy­to­ki­net­ics would have been set to re­ceive roy­al­ties in the “mid-sin­gle-dig­it lev­el to low dou­ble-dig­its.”

The news comes about two years af­ter relde­sem­tiv flopped in a Phase II ALS tri­al. At the time, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said the study failed on change from base­line in slow vi­tal ca­pac­i­ty (SVC) af­ter 12 weeks of dos­ing (p=0.11). The analy­sis al­so showed poor p-val­ues for the ALS Func­tion­al Rat­ing Scale and slope of the Mus­cle Strength Mega-Score.

But de­spite fail­ing the pri­ma­ry end­point, the com­pa­ny ar­gued that the da­ta re­flect­ed “clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful mag­ni­tudes of ef­fect” across all dose lev­els, and main­tained that the place­bo group de­clined at a slow­er rate than ex­pect­ed, which didn’t help.

“Re­sults from FOR­TI­TUDE-ALS are among the most im­pres­sive we have seen in a Phase II clin­i­cal tri­al in ALS,” lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor Je­re­my Shefn­er said back in 2019.

That wasn’t the first or last time Cy­to­ki­net­ics has tout­ed weak or failed da­ta. Back in No­vem­ber, the com­pa­ny cheered a Phase III read­out for its Am­gen-part­nered heart drug ome­cam­tiv mecar­bil. But while the can­di­date met the pri­ma­ry com­pos­ite end­point, it missed a sec­ondary end­point which an­a­lysts had been fol­low­ing as a key mark­er for suc­cess — re­duc­tion of car­dio­vas­cu­lar death.

Lat­er that month, Am­gen shrugged off its 14-year al­liance with Cy­to­ki­net­ics, leav­ing the com­pa­ny to sol­dier on alone.

“Car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic health is­sues in the world which means pa­tients need more in­no­va­tion, not less,” Am­gen said in a state­ment. “… Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the re­sults of GALAC­TIC-HF did not meet the high bar we had set for the pro­gram.”

Contract researcher Charles River Laboratories has been on a roll recently to flesh out its manufacturing arm with a specific focus on its capabilities in gene therapy. Now, the firm is putting its name to a big check for a Maryland-based viral vector firm it thinks will add to its growing expertise in the field.

Charles River will dole out $292.5 million for gene therapy CDMO Vigene Biosciences with the possibility for an additional $57.5 million in performance-based payments, the companies said Monday. The deal will close at the start of Q3, a Charles River spokesman said.

When Biolyse, an Ontario-based manufacturer of sterile injectables, forged a deal with Bolivia last week to manufacture up to 50 million J&J Covid-19 vaccine doses, the agreement kicked off what will prove to be a test case for how difficult the system of compulsory licenses is to navigate.

The first problem: When Biolyse asked J&J, via a March letter, to license its Covid-19 vaccine, manufacture it in Canada and pay 5% royalties on shipments to needy, low-income countries, J&J rejected the offer, refusing to negotiate. J&J also did not respond to a request for comment.

Novartis’ Entresto started the ACC weekend off rough with a trial flop in heart attack patients, slowing the drug’s push into earlier patients. Now, an NIH-sponsored study is casting doubt on Entresto’s use in the most severe heart failure patients, another black mark on the increasingly controversial drug’s record.

Entresto, a combination of sacubitril and valsartan, could not beat out valsartan alone in an outcomes head-to-head for severe heart failure patients with a reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), according to data presented Monday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

One of China’s biggest up-and-comers has a brand new partner, and it’s one whose backers are likely familiar with the other’s.

Perceptive’s LianBio has secured a collaboration with Landos Biopharma, the lead company in Chris Garabedian’s Xontogeny fund, to develop and market two programs in Greater China and other countries in the region, the biotechs announced Monday morning. In exchange, Landos is getting an upfront payment of $18 million, up to $200 million in milestones and royalties on sales in the licensed territories.