Rick Mo­di

VCs love few things more than a proven ex­ec­u­tive team when it comes to launch­ing a new com­pa­ny. And now a group of A-lis­ters has turned to a pair of top ex­ecs out of AveX­is to steer the lat­est gene ther­a­py play­er in­to the clin­ic.

The biotech is Waltham, MA-based Affinia and the two ex­ecs are Sean Nolan and Rick Mo­di — the for­mer CEO and CBO re­spec­tive­ly of AveX­is, the gene ther­a­py pi­o­neer that fetched $8.7 bil­lion in a sale to No­var­tis. Nolan has now tak­en the chair­man’s role at Affinia while Mo­di moves up to the CEO post at the com­pa­ny.

Sean Nolan

Both were key play­ers on a team that steered Zol­gens­ma to the mar­ket as the most ex­pen­sive once-off drug now avail­able. They worked close­ly with CSO Bri­an Kas­par, who was blamed by No­var­tis for in­clud­ing ma­nip­u­lat­ed da­ta in their mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion, trig­ger­ing a scan­dal that con­sumed No­var­tis for weeks. Kas­par ve­he­ment­ly de­nied the ac­cu­sa­tion, though, and the scan­dal qui­et­ly dis­si­pat­ed with the FDA tak­ing none of the ac­tions it had threat­ened.

The biotech’s pro­mo blast this morn­ing sug­gests Affinia is on to a bet­ter AAV tech plat­form than what’s cur­rent­ly in cir­cu­la­tion. Back­ing up that boast are 3 sci­en­tif­ic founders:

Luk Van­den­berghe, Botond Ros­ka and Aaron Tward.

— Van­den­berghe, a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Med, is cred­it­ed as a co-in­ven­tor of AAV9. He de­vel­oped the tech that was de­vel­oped at the Grous­beck Gene Ther­a­py Cen­ter un­der a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Lon­za and Mass­a­chu­setts Eye and Ear.

— Ros­ka is the di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of Mol­e­c­u­lar and Clin­i­cal Oph­thal­mol­o­gy Basel.

— Tward is an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor at UC-San Fran­cis­co.

Luk Van­den­berghe

“Affinia Ther­a­peu­tics is bring­ing to­geth­er com­ple­men­tary ex­per­tise al­low­ing us to re­al­ize a ra­tio­nal de­sign fu­ture for AAV vec­tors, pro­mot­ers and oth­er com­po­nents of gene ther­a­pies. By lever­ag­ing syn­thet­ic and sys­tems bi­ol­o­gy com­bined with high-through­put screen­ing and tis­sue and sin­gle-cell res­o­lu­tion, we are as­pir­ing to achieve much-need­ed im­proved phar­ma­co­log­i­cal con­trol of this nov­el modal­i­ty in med­i­cine,” said Van­den­berghe in a pre­pared state­ment.

That line­up war­rant­ed a $60 mil­lion launch round from the seed in­vestors at F-Prime Cap­i­tal and New En­ter­prise As­so­ci­ates, with At­las jump­ing in for the first time.

The US House of Representatives today voted along party lines (all Dems voted for it), 220-207 to pass new, wide-ranging legislation that will allow Medicare drug price negotiations for the first time ever, and cap seniors’ drug expenses to $2,000 per year and seniors’ insulin costs at $35 per month.

Setting up a major victory for President Joe Biden, representatives returned from their summer recess to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, even as many noted the bill would only modestly reduce inflation.

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.

After controversially spinning out its talc liabilities and filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to settle 38,000 lawsuits, Johnson & Johnson is now changing up the formula for its baby powder products.

J&J is beginning the transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio, the pharma giant announced on Thursday — just months after a federal judge ruled in favor of its “Texas two-step” bankruptcy to settle allegations that its talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. An appeals court has since agreed to revisit that case.