It takes a lit­tle pa­tience, but if you bore through some com­ments about how en­thu­si­as­tic Syn­dax $SNDX CEO Brig­gs Mor­ri­son is about their on­go­ing piv­otal tri­al in breast can­cer with their lead drug, you’ll find that the ther­a­py just failed a cou­ple of key com­bi­na­tion stud­ies with two ap­proved PD-L1s.

Brig­gs Mor­ri­son

Mor­ri­son — who had a se­nior R&D post at As­traZeneca be­fore mak­ing the leap to biotech — notes that the 2 Phase Ib/II stud­ies com­bined enti­no­s­tat with Roche’s Tecen­triq and Pfiz­er/Mer­ck KGaA’s Baven­cio for triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer and ovar­i­an can­cer. But it failed to ex­tend pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

As a re­sult, the Waltham, MA-based biotech is de­fer­ring the PD-1 pro­gram for enti­no­s­tat, which in­cludes a study in non-small cell lung can­cer. In­stead, the biotech is cir­cling the wag­ons around enti­no­s­tat “in HR+ breast can­cer and SNDX-5613, a Menin in­hibitor be­ing de­vel­oped for ge­net­i­cal­ly-de­fined pop­u­la­tion(s) of acute leukemias.”

Mor­ri­son, who’s kept a low pro­file since leav­ing As­traZeneca, prefers to fo­cus on the pos­i­tive. In a pre­pared state­ment, he not­ed:

We re­main high­ly en­cour­aged by the po­ten­tial for a pos­i­tive over­all sur­vival read­out in E2112, our Phase III reg­is­tra­tion tri­al of enti­no­s­tat plus ex­emes­tane in HR+, HER2- breast can­cer, and ex­pect the next in­ter­im analy­sis in the sec­ond quar­ter. As a re­minder, any pos­i­tive over­all sur­vival re­sult would al­low us to file for full reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval in an in­di­ca­tion for which ex­ist­ing ther­a­pies have failed to show a sur­vival ben­e­fit. In ad­di­tion, we con­tin­ue to ex­pect to file an IND in the sec­ond quar­ter for our tar­get­ed ther­a­py, SNDX-5613, an in­hibitor of the Menin-MLL in­ter­ac­tion.

A fail­ure would prob­a­bly cap­size the com­pa­ny at this point.

The small-cap biotech has a lit­tle more than $80 mil­lion in re­serves, which ac­counts for close to half of its mar­ket cap of $155 mil­lion. Its stock is trad­ing at less than half of where it peaked in the spring of 2018, and slid 12% in af­ter-mar­ket trad­ing.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.