BioNTech lays out plans for $251M IPO; Trio teams up to form joint lab to research chronic lung diseases

September 25, 2019 10:21 AM EDTUpdated 10:35 AM

BioNTech lays out plans for $251M IPO; Trio teams up to form joint lab to research chronic lung diseases

Kathy Wong

Assistant Editor

→ Earlier this month, German cancer drug developer BioNTech laid out plans for a $100 million public listing in the US, two months after unveiling a massive $325 million in an upsized round of financing. However, the company later revealed that shares worth about $97 million had been delayed due to the political unrest in Hong Kong and the ongoing trade tensions between the US and China. Today, the company announced its plans to offer 13.2 million American depository shares at a price range of $18 to $20 to raise $251 million. At the midpoint of the proposed range, BioNTech would command a fully diluted market value of $4.5 billion. The company plans to list under the symbol $BNTX.

Joint bookrunners include JP Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch, UBS Investment Bank and SVB Leerink.

→ Bayer, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital are joining forces to launch a joint lab to research new drug candidates to treat chronic lung diseases. “The joint lab will host scientists from all three parties and Bayer is investing more than USD 30 million to fund joint research projects over the next five years,” they wrote in a statement.

AUTHOR

Kathy Wong

Assistant Editor

kathy@endpointsnews.com

Kathy Wong on LinkedIn

5AM Ventures: Fueling the Next Generation of Innovators

Brian Abrahams

Managing Director and Co-Head of Biotechnology Equity Research

By RBC Capital Markets
With Andy Schwab, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at 5AM Ventures

Key Points

Prescription Digital Therapeutics, cell therapy technologies, and in silico medicines will be a vital part of future treatment modalities.
Unlocking the potential of the microbiome could be the missing link to better disease diagnosis.
Growing links between academia, industry, and venture capital are spinning out more innovative biotech companies.
Biotech is now seen by investors as a growth space as well as a safe haven, fuelling the recent IPO boom.

Hal Barron, GSK via YouTube

January 22, 2021 08:25 AM EST

R&D

What does $29B buy you in Big Pharma? In GlaxoSmithKline’s case, a whole lot of uncomfortable questions about the pipeline

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Talk about your bad timing.

A little over a week ago, GSK R&D chief Hal Barron marked his third anniversary at the research helm by taking a turn at the virtual podium during JP Morgan to make the case that he and his team had built a valuable late-stage pipeline capable of churning out more than 10 blockbusters in the next 5 years.

And then, just days later, one of the cancer drugs he bet big on as a top prospect — bintrafusp, partnered with Merck KGaA — failed its first pivotal test in non-small cell lung cancer.

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January 21, 2021 08:00 AM EST

R&D

Coronavirus

Eli Lilly's antibody cuts risk of Covid-19 by up to 80% among the most vulnerable — but will it have a place next to vaccines?

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Eli Lilly says bamlanivimab lowered the risk of contracting symptomatic Covid-19 in a first-of-its-kind trial involving nursing home residents and staff, paving the way for a new option to protect against the virus.

But how big of an impact it might have, and what role it will play, at a time vaccines are being rolled out to the exact population it is targeting still remains unclear.

Among 965 participants in the study — all of whom tested negative for the coronavirus at baseline — the number of symptomatic cases reported in the bamlanivimab arm was 57% lower than that in the placebo arm (odds ratio 0.43, p=0.00021). In addition to that primary endpoint, all secondary endpoints reached statistical significance.

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Janet Woodcock (AP Images)

January 21, 2021 07:49 AM ESTUpdated 08:04 AM

People

Regulatory

Endpoints poll: Janet Woodcock takes the (interim) helm at the FDA. And a large majority of our readers want her to stay there

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

It’s official: Janet Woodcock is now the acting chief of the FDA.

And — according to an Endpoints poll — most industry readers would like her to stay there, although a significant minority is strongly opposed.

To recap: Joe Biden is reportedly choosing between Woodcock and former deputy FDA commissioner Joshua Sharfstein as his nominee for the permanent position. Given their respective track records, the decision is set to determine the agency’s lodestar for years to come.

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An Endpoints Zoom meeting; and the email header employees will see if your company is a Premium subscriber

January 21, 2021 07:01 AM ESTUpdated 10:11 AM

Publisher's note

What’s next for Endpoints — and how to support our independent biopharma news mission

Arsalan Arif

Publisher & Founder

The firehose of biopharma news is gushing these days.

That’s why broader and deeper is the theme for 2021 at Endpoints. You can expect new coverage outside our core R&D focus, with deeper reporting in some key areas. When John Carroll and I launched Endpoints nearly five years ago, we were wading in waist-high waters. Now we’re a team of 25 full-time staffers (and growing) with plans to cover the flood of biopharma news, Endpoints-style.

Charlie Fuchs, Roche and Genentech global head of product development for oncology and hematology (Yale Cancer Center)

January 22, 2021 10:47 AM EST

People

Yale cancer specialist Charlie Fuchs tapped as new global development chief for Roche/Genentech

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Roche and their big sub Genentech have just recruited a top cancer specialist at Yale to head up global product development in oncology and hematology.

I just got word that the pharma giant, which leads one of the most active cancer research operations in the world, recruited Charlie Fuchs, director of the Yale Cancer Center and physician-in-chief of Smilow Cancer Hospital. He’ll join the global operation March 1 and will be based in South San Francisco, where Genentech is based.

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January 22, 2021 10:42 AM ESTUpdated 10:56 AM

News Briefing

News briefing: Eli Lilly completes $1B+ Prevail buyout; Elzonris approved in Europe for adults

Max Gelman

Associate Editor

Eli Lilly’s $1.04 billion takeover of Prevail Therapeutics is officially complete, the company announced Friday.

The sides had entered into the buyout agreement last month with Lilly focusing on Prevail’s pipeline of gene therapies, highlighting two AAV9 programs in Parkinson’s disease and frontotemporal dementia as potential winners. Lilly paid $22.50 per share, which amounted to an 82% premium over the previous day’s closing price and a 117% premium over Prevail’s 60-day average.

Jonathan Weissman (MIT)

January 22, 2021 10:30 AM ESTUpdated 10:57 AM

Discovery

In Focus

Can a new CRISPR technique unlock the secrets of how cancer spreads?

Jason Mast

Editor

Jonathan Weissman’s team watched the cancer cells spread across the doomed mouse. Engineered with a bioluminescent enzyme, they appeared in scans first as a small navy blue diamond lodged near the heart; a week later, as a triangle splayed across the mouse’s upper body, with streaks of green and two distinct bright red hubs of activity. By day 54, the mouse resembled a lava lamp.

The images would have been familiar to any cancer biologist, but they didn’t actually tell you much about what was going on: why the cancer was metastasizing or which cells were responsible. For that, Weissman’s team had designed a new tool. Inside the original navy blue diamond, they had engineered the microbiological equivalent of an airplane’s black box — a “molecular recorder” that, after the mouse’s death, could allow them to extract the cells and wind back intimate footage of a single cancer’s ascent.

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Janet Woodcock and Joshua Sharfstein (AP, Images)

January 19, 2021 09:38 AM EST

Regulatory

Poll: Should Joshua Sharfstein or Janet Woodcock lead the FDA from here?

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

It’s time for a new FDA commissioner to come on board, a rite of passage for Joe Biden’s administration that should help seal the new president’s rep on seeking out the experts to lead the government over the next 4 years.

As of now, the competition for the top job appears to have narrowed down to 2 people: The longtime CDER chief Janet Woodcock and Joshua Sharfstein, the former principal deputy at the FDA under Peggy Hamburg. Both were appointed by Barack Obama.