Biond­Vax stock im­plodes af­ter a big PhI­II gam­ble for its uni­ver­sal flu vac­cine fails

Af­ter fly­ing high on Wall Street for the last few months of a pan­dem­ic, Biond­Vax’s stock and dreams of get­ting ap­proval for its uni­ver­sal flu vac­cine hit the wind­shield.

The Jerusalem-based biotech an­nounced on Fri­day that its on­ly clin­i­cal can­di­date, M-001, failed both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary end­points in a Phase III study. There was no sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in re­duc­tion of flu ill­ness and sever­i­ty be­tween the vac­cine and place­bo groups, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny. The vac­cine did prove safe, if in­ef­fec­tive, Biond­Vax said.

The news sent Biond­Vax’s stock plum­met­ing 85%, clos­ing at $5.20 per share. The day be­fore, shares closed at $37.88 apiece. For the last few years, the biotech’s share val­ue lin­gered around $5 to $7 per share. Prices be­gan to rise in Jan­u­ary, then surged from April to Ju­ly, like­ly due to the pan­dem­ic. On Ju­ly 14, they peaked at $48.25 apiece. Ever­core ISI an­a­lyst Josh Schim­mer pre­dict­ed back in March that all vac­cine de­vel­op­ers — not just those fo­cused on Covid-19 — would prof­it from the health cri­sis, list­ing $BVXV among the po­ten­tial win­ners.

Biond­Vax’s Phase III tri­al in­clud­ed 12,463 adults ages 50 and up: “the group most ur­gent­ly in need of im­proved pro­tec­tion from the flu,” CSO Tamar Ben-Yedidia said in a state­ment. The can­di­date, de­signed as a com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor to in­fluen­za A and B virus­es, was stud­ied over the course of two flu sea­sons, be­gin­ning in 2018. Each par­tic­i­pant was mon­i­tored for just one flu sea­son.

Ron Babecoff

There was no sug­ar-coat­ing the find­ings. “We are dis­ap­point­ed with these re­sults …” founder, pres­i­dent and CEO Ron Babecoff said be­fore he went on to thank the team for 15 years of “ded­i­ca­tion and pas­sion.”

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this study did not have the ef­fi­ca­cy out­comes that we an­tic­i­pat­ed for M-001 on a stand­alone ba­sis. We have ob­served in sev­en pre­vi­ous stud­ies that M-001 safe­ly pro­voked an im­mune re­sponse to a broad range of flu strains, but ul­ti­mate­ly this was not suf­fi­cient on a stand­alone ba­sis to show pro­tec­tion,” Babecoff said in the state­ment.

It’s not look­ing good for the biotech, which said it’s “ex­am­in­ing op­tions to max­i­mize the val­ue” of its as­sets, in­clud­ing IP and a state-of-the-art man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

Back in June, Biond­Vax met both pri­ma­ry end­points in a Phase II tri­al sup­port­ed by the NI­AID. The com­pa­ny had an­nounced that the can­di­date “in­duced sig­nif­i­cant poly­func­tion­al T cell re­spons­es” — but it wasn’t enough to clear Phase III.

Oth­er play­ers in search of the Holy Grail in­clude Vac­citech, which be­gan dos­ing par­tic­i­pants in a Phase IIb study last June, and the NIH, which un­veiled a can­di­date head­ed for the clin­ic last April.

Forge Bi­o­log­ics’ cGMP Com­pli­ant and Com­mer­cial­ly Vi­able Be­spoke Affin­i­ty Chro­matog­ra­phy Plat­form

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Feng Zhang (Susan Walsh/AP Images)

In search of new way to de­liv­er gene ed­i­tors, CRISPR pi­o­neer turns to mol­e­c­u­lar sy­ringes

Bug bacteria are ruthless.

Some soil bacteria have evolved tiny, but deadly injection systems that attach to insect cells, perforate them and release toxins inside — killing a bug in just a few days’ time. Scientists, on the other hand, want to leverage that system to deliver medicines.

In a paper published Wednesday in Nature, MIT CRISPR researcher Feng Zhang and his lab describe how they engineered these syringes made by bacteria to deliver potential therapies like toxins that kill cancer cells and gene editors. With the help of an AI program, they developed syringes that can load proteins of their choice and selectively target human cells.

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Cedric Ververken, Confo Therapeutics CEO

Dai­ichi Sankyo inks $183M dis­cov­ery deal with GPCR biotech for CNS tar­get

Belgian biotech Confo Therapeutics has landed $183 million, plus potential royalties, in a drug-discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo.

Early Thursday, Confo Therapeutics put out word of the deal that will be focused on small molecule antagonists to go after an undisclosed target that the company says is associated with CNS diseases.

Confo CEO Cedric Ververken told Endpoints News that Daiichi originally reached out to learn about the biotech’s technology. He added that Confo, founded in 2015, will use its platform to drug a GPCR target that Daiichi has struggled with internally.

Dif­fu­sion to hand Nas­daq spot to EIP Phar­ma for PhI­Ib de­men­tia study of ex-Ver­tex drug

One of the more than a dozen bidders for Diffusion Pharmaceuticals’ spot on Nasdaq has prevailed.

Boston biotech EIP Pharma will merge with Diffusion in an all-stock deal, with plans to start a Phase IIb clinical trial in the coming months in a common form of dementia with no approved treatments. The combined company will be renamed CervoMed.

The nine-year-old privately-held EIP is working on a former Vertex drug that it will test in a 160-person Phase IIb in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies, or DLB. The National Institute on Aging is expected to fund that trial with a $21 million grant. With the reverse merger, slated for closing in the middle of this year, EIP will be funded through that readout in the second half of 2024. EIP’s equity and debt holders will own about 77.25% of the combined company.

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Luke Miels, GSK chief commercial officer

GSK picks up Scynex­is' FDA-ap­proved an­ti­fun­gal drug for $90M up­front

GSK is dishing out $90 million cash to add an antifungal drug to its commercial portfolio, in a deal spotlighting the pharma giant’s growing focus on infectious diseases.

The upfront will lock in an exclusive license to Scynexis’ Brexafemme, which was approved in 2021 to treat a yeast infection known as vulvovaginal candidiasis, except in China and certain other countries where Scynexis already out-licensed the drug.

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See­los Ther­a­peu­tics 'tem­porar­i­ly' stops study in rare neu­ro dis­or­der for busi­ness rea­sons

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Alec­tor cuts 11% of work­force as it dou­bles down on late-stage neu­ro pro­grams part­nered with GSK, Ab­b­Vie

A month after revealing plans to concentrate on its late-stage immuno-neurology pipeline, Alector is trimming its headcount by 11%.

The layoffs will impact around 30 employees across the organization, the company disclosed in an SEC filing, adding that the plan will “better align the company’s resources” with the new strategy. With $712.9 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments as of the end of 2022, Alector believes the reserves will now get it through 2025.

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Mathai Mammen, FogPharma's next CEO

Math­ai Mam­men hands in J&J's R&D keys to lead Greg Ver­dine’s Fog­Phar­ma 

In the early 1990s, Mathai Mammen was a teaching assistant in Greg Verdine’s Science B46 course at Harvard. In June, the former R&D head at Johnson & Johnson will succeed Verdine as CEO, president and chair of FogPharma, the same month the seven-year-old biotech kickstarts its first clinical trial.

After leading R&D at one of the largest drugmakers in the world, taking the company through more than half a dozen drug approvals in the past few years, not to mention a Covid-19 vaccine race, Mammen departed J&J last month and will take the helm of a Cambridge, MA biotech attempting to go after what Verdine calls the “true emperor of all oncogenes” — beta-catenin.

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J&J bows out of RSV vac­cine race, end­ing PhI­II study and ced­ing to Pfiz­er, GSK

Johnson & Johnson announced Wednesday morning it is ending development of its adult RSV vaccine that was in the middle of a 27,200-patient trial, giving up a big slice of what’s expected to be the next multibillion-dollar pharma market.

The decision came down to the shifting RSV “competitive landscape,” a company spokesperson tells Endpoints News, adding the “breadth of options” was much different than when J&J first started its pivotal study. The spokesperson declined to comment on the Phase III data, saying only the shot is undergoing an “ongoing assessment.”

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