Fed­er­al judge Kiyo Mat­sumo­to in a Brook­lyn court to­day sen­tenced Mar­tin Shkre­li to 7 years on three felony fraud con­vic­tions, end­ing a lengthy pub­lic spec­ta­cle in which the biotech ex­ec man­aged to re­peat­ed­ly en­rage the pub­lic over his drug pric­ing schemes. He was con­vict­ed, though, on charges re­lat­ed to ly­ing to in­vestors in his hedge funds.

Shkre­li’s at­tor­ney, Ben Braf­man, had waged a skill­ful cam­paign to guard the de­fi­ant young ex­ec, who, af­ter mak­ing bail, wound up back in prison await­ing sen­tenc­ing af­ter the judge was an­gered by Shkre­li’s bizarre of­fer of a $5,000 boun­ty on Hillary Clin­ton’s hair. The judge al­lowed 6 months cred­it for time served, leav­ing a long stretch for Shkre­li be­hind bars.

Min­utes be­fore the sen­tenc­ing, Braf­man ar­gued the gov­ern­ment’s re­quest for 15 years was in­ap­pro­pri­ate, call­ing it “dra­con­ian.” Braf­man said Shkre­li “may be bril­liant in cer­tain mat­ters,” but “lacks cer­tain so­cial skills.” He plead­ed with the judge not to rule harsh­ly on Shkre­li “just for be­ing Mar­tin Shkre­li.”

Mat­sumo­to as­sured Braf­man that Shkre­li’s so­cial me­dia pres­ence — and the mat­ter of drug pric­ing — were not is­sues for her.

“He be­haved re­spect­ful­ly in court,” she said.

In his wrap-up, Braf­man last­ly pled that the judge re­con­sid­er the lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty Shkre­li should be jailed in.

Def: When you sen­tence Mr. Shkre­li, it’s re­al prison. De­spite fact he some­times says stu­pid things. At end of day, he doesn’t be­long there, and doesn’t be­long there for sig­nif­i­cant amt of time. #PharmaBro #Shkre­li @wcbs880

— Ethan Harp (@EthanHarp­News) March 9, 2018

When the gov­ern­ment was up to lay its case against Shkre­li, they did it suc­cinct­ly.

Govt: Shkre­li is a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal, we didn’t say it was be­cause he was a lit­tle off or strange. He was con­vict­ed of 3 of 4 fraud schemes. #PharmaBro #Shkre­li @wcbs880

— Ethan Harp (@EthanHarp­News) March 9, 2018

In short, they called Shkre­li’s de­fense ab­surd, es­pe­cial­ly the part about spar­ing him for sci­ence’s sake.

Govt: This talk of him hav­ing po­ten­tial. A sig­nif­i­cant term in prison won’t de­ny the world of cures to child­hood dis­eases. #PharmaBro #Shkre­li @wcbs880

— Ethan Harp (@EthanHarp­News) March 9, 2018

Shkre­li him­self made his last state­ments, call­ing his con­duct both neg­li­gent and stu­pid.

#Shkre­li: “I still have work to do… I’m here bc of my gross, stu­pid neg­li­gent mis­takes I made at MSMB. This woul dbe a good time to apol­o­gize to all the in­vestors of MSMB.” His voice break­ing: “I’m ter­ri­bly sor­ry I lost your trust. You de­serve bet­ter.”

— Meg Tir­rell (@megtir­rell) March 9, 2018

#Shkre­li: There was no gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy to take down Mar­tin Shkre­li. I took down Mar­tin Shkre­li.

— Meg Tir­rell (@megtir­rell) March 9, 2018

Dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing, Mat­sumo­to said she as­sumed Shkre­li would ap­peal any sen­tence he was giv­en, and Braf­man con­firmed lat­er that he would ap­peal.

Im­age: Court­room sketch of Mar­tin Shkre­li and his lawyer Ben Braf­man. AP IM­AGES

With 22 biotech IPOs on the books and four more set to price in the last week of June, in­vest­ment ad­vis­er Re­nais­sance Cap­i­tal has tak­en the pulse of the re­cent rush.

By the IPO ex­perts’ count, 25 out of 32 health­care of­fer­ings this year have been from biotechs — dif­fer­ing slight­ly from Brad Lon­car’s tal­ly — and the over­all pic­ture is one of un­der­per­for­mance. While they av­er­aged a first-day re­turn of 9.0%, col­lec­tive­ly they have trad­ed down to a 5.9% re­turn. Turn­ing Point $TP­TX and Cor­texyme $CRTX emerged on top at the half-year mark, ris­ing 135% and 109% re­spec­tive­ly.

Known in the in­dus­try as the Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO, Novotech is now lead CRO ser­vices provider for the grow­ing num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al biotechs se­lect­ing the re­gion for their stud­ies.

Re­flect­ing this Asia-Pa­cif­ic growth, Novotech staff num­bers are up 20% since De­cem­ber 2018 to 600 in-house clin­i­cal re­search peo­ple across a full range of ser­vices, across the re­gion.

Novotech’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties have been rec­og­nized by an­a­lysts like Frost & Sul­li­van, most re­cent­ly with the pres­ti­gious Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO Biotech of the year award for best prac­tices in clin­i­cal re­search for biotechs for the fifth year. See oth­er awards here.

With eyes on what it be­lieves is a $500 mil­lion peak rev­enue op­por­tu­ni­ty in Eu­rope, Barcelona-based Almi­rall has stepped up with $50 mil­lion in cash to take up the op­tion on Der­mi­ra’s IL-13 an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry drug le­brik­izum­ab just ahead of the start of Phase III. And there’s an­oth­er $30 mil­lion due as the late-stage pro­gram gets geared up.

That shouldn’t be long from now, as Der­mi­ra ex­pects to be­gin the late-stage tri­al work for atopic der­mati­tis be­fore the end of this year as it fol­lows a trail that ex­ecs in­sist leads to block­buster re­turns. Along the way, they’ll need to take on the 600-pound go­ril­la in atopic der­mati­tis: the IL-13/IL-4 drug Dupix­ent, from Re­gen­eron and Sanofi. Ri­vals al­so in­clude Leo Phar­ma, in its piv­otal with tralok­izum­ab, and Anap­tys­Bio in the hunt with a mid-stage pro­gram for etokimab, pre­vi­ous­ly re­ferred to as ANB020.

The NASH par­ty is over at No­var­tis-backed Cona­tus. And this time they’re turn­ing off the lights.

More than 2 years af­ter No­var­tis sur­prised the biotech in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty with its $50 mil­lion up­front and promise of R&D sup­port to part­ner with the lit­tle biotech on NASH — ig­nit­ing a light­ning strike for the share price — Cona­tus $CNAT is back with the lat­est bit­ter tale to tell about em­ri­c­as­an, which once in­spired con­fi­dence at the phar­ma gi­ant.

Fresh off the high of its Nas­daq IPO de­but, and the low of com­par­isons to Cymabay — whose NASH drug re­cent­ly stum­bled — Gen­fit on Mon­day un­veiled an up to $228 mil­lion deal with transpa­cif­ic biotech Terns Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to de­vel­op its flag­ship ex­per­i­men­tal liv­er drug — elafi­bra­nor — in Greater Chi­na.

The deal comes weeks af­ter Gen­fit $GN­FT is­sued a fiery de­fense of its dual PPAR ag­o­nist elafi­bra­nor, when com­peti­tor Cymabay’s PPARδ ag­o­nist, se­ladel­par, fiz­zled in a snap­shot of da­ta from an on­go­ing mid-stage tri­al. The main goal at the end of 12 weeks was for se­ladel­par to in­duce a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in liv­er fat con­tent, but da­ta showed that pa­tients on the place­bo ac­tu­al­ly per­formed bet­ter.

→ Alex­ion $ALXN has scored a speedy re­view for Ul­tomiris for pa­tients with atyp­i­cal he­molyt­ic ure­mic syn­drome (aHUS) af­ter post­ing pos­i­tive da­ta from a piv­otal study in Jan­u­ary. The drug is the rare dis­ease com­pa­ny’s shot at pro­tect­ing its block­buster blood dis­or­der fran­chise that is cur­rent­ly cen­tered around its flag­ship drug, Soliris, which is a com­ple­ment in­hibitor typ­i­cal­ly ad­min­is­tered every two weeks. Ul­tomiris has a sim­i­lar mech­a­nism of ac­tion but re­quires less-fre­quent dos­ing — every eight weeks. The de­ci­sion date has been set to Oc­to­ber 19. Late last year, Ul­tomiris se­cured ap­proval for noc­tur­nal he­mo­glo­bin­uria (PNH) pa­tients.

A month af­ter roil­ing in­vestors with what skep­tics dis­missed as cher­ry pick­ing of its de­pres­sion da­ta, Min­er­va is back with a clean slate of da­ta from its Phase IIb in­som­nia tri­al.

In a de­tailed up­date, the Waltham, MA-based biotech said sel­torex­ant (MIN-202) hit both the pri­ma­ry and sev­er­al sec­ondary end­points, ef­fec­tive­ly im­prov­ing sleep in­duc­tion and pro­long­ing sleep du­ra­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors made a point to note that the ef­fects were con­sis­tent across the adult and el­der­ly pop­u­la­tions, with the lat­ter more prone to the sleep dis­or­der.