→ Less than two months af­ter Ger­man biotech BioN­Tech raised a her­culean $325 mil­lion in an up­sized round of fi­nanc­ing — the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion have signed a pact with the com­pa­ny, mak­ing an ini­tial eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment of $55 mil­lion to de­vel­op vac­cine and im­munother­a­py can­di­dates to pre­vent HIV and tu­ber­cu­lo­sis. To­tal fund­ing un­der the deal could hit $100 mil­lion, via po­ten­tial grant fund­ing from the foun­da­tion, BioN­Tech said on Wednes­day.

→ BeiGene, a pi­o­neer and dar­ling of the grow­ing US-Chi­na biotech crowd, was the sub­ject of a fe­ro­cious short re­port pub­lished by J Cap­i­tal on Thurs­day. Shares fell rough­ly 9% on both the Nas­daq $BGNE and the Hong Kong stock ex­change (06160) on al­le­ga­tions that the com­pa­ny faked sales of the Cel­gene drugs it’s in charge of mar­ket­ing in Chi­na, in­vest­ed in bo­gus man­u­fac­tur­ing sites, and over­spent on wages for R&D staff. Tim Mur­ray, au­thor of the re­port, fur­ther ac­cused ex­ecs of “pump­ing and dump­ing,” talk­ing up BeiGene’s stand­ing with Chi­nese drug reg­u­la­tors and po­ten­tial for its drugs while covert­ly sell­ing off their own stock.

In a state­ment to the HKEX, BeiGene called the al­le­ga­tions “in­ac­cu­rate, un­found­ed and mis­lead­ing” as well as “bla­tant­ly false.”

“From its in­cep­tion, BeiGene has op­er­at­ed with an un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to com­pli­ance, ethics, and in­tegri­ty,” it wrote. “BeiGene re­mains fo­cused on its mis­sion to build a bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny that will pro­vide the high­est qual­i­ty ther­a­pies to the great­est num­ber of pa­tients around the world.”

→ No­var­tis $NVS is palm­ing off a Chi­na-based unit for $790 mil­lion yuan (about $110.5 mil­lion), ac­cord­ing to a Wednes­day re­port by Dow Jones. The plant, which was opened a decade ago, was sold to Chi­na’s Zhe­jiang Ji­uzhou, ex­clud­ing the Swiss drug­mak­er’s tech­nol­o­gy and drug-de­vel­op­ment as­sets. The ac­qui­si­tion will help Zhe­jiang Ji­uzhou ce­ment its po­si­tion as a strate­gic sup­pli­er to No­var­tis, not­ed the re­port.

Over the past 10 years I’ve made a point of getting to know the Golden Triangle and the special role the UK biopharma industry plays there in drug development. The concentration of world class research institutes, some of the most accomplished scientists I’ve ever seen at work and a rising tide of global investment cash leaves an impression that there’s much, much more to come as biotech hubs are birthed and nurtured.

Aclaris Therapeutics has found a way to get rid of the warts and all.

The company — which earlier this month decided to focus on its arsenal of kinase inhibitors — on Monday unveiled positive data from a pivotal study testing its lead experimental drug for use in common warts.

The drug, A-101, was tested in a 502-patient study called THWART-2 — patients enrolled had one to six warts before qualifying for the trial. Patients either self-administered A-101 topical solution or a vehicle twice a week over a two-month period. A higher proportion of patients on the drug (a potent hydrogen peroxide topical solution) saw their warts disappear at day 60, versus the vehicle (p<0.0001) — meeting the main goal of the study.  Each secondary endpoint also emerged in favor of A-101, the company said.

Psychedelics have experienced a renaissance in recent years amid a torrent of preclinical and clinical research suggesting it might provide a path to treat mood disorders conventional remedies have only scraped at. Now a preclinical trial from a young biotech suggests at least one psychedelic compound has effects beyond the mind, and — if you believe the still very, very early hype — could provide the first single remedy for some of the main complications of obesity.

Acceleron is scrapping a muscular dystrophy development program underway for its number 2 drug in the pipeline after pouring over some failed mid-stage secondary data.

Gone is the ACE-083 project in patients with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy. Their drug hit the primary endpoint on building muscle but flopped on key secondaries for functional improvements in patients, which execs felt was vital to the drug’s success.