Robert Fos­ter Con­traVir

→ As hoped, Cel­gene $CELG and its part­ners at Ac­celeron $XL­RN have se­cured pri­or­i­ty re­view for their red blood cell boost­ing drug, lus­pa­ter­cept, which has been pegged to even­tu­al­ly gen­er­ate peak sales of $2 bil­lion. The bi­o­log­ic has been de­vel­oped to man­age ane­mia re­sult­ing from myelodys­plas­tic syn­drome (MDS) as well as be­ta tha­lassemia. The FDA ex­pects to make its de­ci­sion on the be­ta-tha­lassemia in­di­ca­tion by De­cem­ber 4, while the MDS in­di­ca­tion will be dealt with by April 4, 2020. The Eu­ro­pean re­view of the drug is al­so un­der­way, the com­pa­nies said on Tues­day.

→ Au­rinia’s $AUPH largest share­hold­er is skep­ti­cal that the com­pa­ny’s lead­er­ship team is up to task com­mer­cial­iz­ing its lead drug, vo­closporin, as the Cana­di­an biotech revs up late-stage stud­ies in lu­pus and dry eye dis­ease. Ko­rea-based Iljin has nom­i­nat­ed three in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors to the eight-mem­ber board in an at­tempt to rein in in­sid­ers who they say have been plac­ing self-in­ter­ests above those of in­vestors. Chief among the three nom­i­nees is Robert Fos­ter, the ex-CEO of Isotech­ni­ka whom Iljin cred­its for the dis­cov­ery of vo­closporin. The oth­er two, Soon-Yub (Samuel) Kwon and Myeong-Hee Yu, bring reg­u­la­to­ry and sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­tise, re­spec­tive­ly. CEO Pe­ter Green­leaf — re­cent­ly ap­point­ed af­ter stints at Cere­cor, Su­cam­po and Med­Im­mune — and chair­man George Milne have pre­vi­ous­ly urged in­vestors to re­ject Iljin’s nom­i­na­tions.

Robert Ian­none Linkedin

→ In April, the chief med­ical of­fi­cer of the em­bat­tled biotech Im­munomedics $IM­MU Robert Ian­none said he was leav­ing the com­pa­ny to work in Penn­syl­va­nia to be “close to his fam­i­ly.” On Mon­day, it was re­vealed that the for­mer As­traZeneca $AZN ex­ec­u­tive is head­ed to Jazz Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $JAZZ, where he will lead glob­al R&D.

→ Peanut al­ler­gy drug mak­er Aim­mune $AIMT pre­sent­ed da­ta from a rollover 28-week study on Tues­day that fol­lowed its land­mark piv­otal study. The re­sults sug­gest­ed that its treat­ment, AR101, can help pa­tients tol­er­ate high­er dos­es of peanut pro­tein, thus re­in­forc­ing the ra­tio­nale for con­tin­ued dai­ly dos­ing of AR101 be­yond one year, as test­ed in the late-stage PAL­ISADE tri­al. An FDA ap­proval de­ci­sion for AR101 is ex­pect­ed in Jan­u­ary 2020.

John Oyler BeiGene

→ In a sign of Chi­na’s grow­ing in­flu­ence on glob­al biotech, BeiGene chief John Oyler has been elect­ed to BIO’s board of di­rec­tors as well as the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s health sec­tion gov­ern­ing board.

→ Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts-based Strand Ther­a­peu­tics — which is fo­cused on gene ther­a­pies — has se­cured a $6 mil­lion seed round led by Play­ground Glob­al with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Alexan­dria Ven­ture In­vest­ments, AN­RI, and a group of pri­vate in­vestors. “This cap­i­tal will be in­stru­men­tal to build­ing out and scal­ing Strand’s mR­NA pro­gram­ming tech­nol­o­gy,” said Ja­cob Be­craft, the com­pa­ny’s co-founder and CEO, in a state­ment.

Close Gilead ally Galapagos is selling off one of its contract research organizations to a Polish pharma company.

Galapagos has agreed to sell 100% of the outstanding shares in the CRO Fidelta to Selvita, in a deal worth roughly $37 million expected to close in the first week of January. The acquisition is expected to nearly double Selvita’s revenues, the company says, as well as expand its drug discovery efforts.

Purdue Pharma, the producer of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, admitted Tuesday that, yes, it did contribute to America’s opioid epidemic.

The drugmaker formally pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, the AP reported, including getting in the way of the DEA’s efforts to combat the crisis, failing to prevent the painkillers from ending up on the black market and encouraging doctors to write more painkiller prescriptions through two methods: paying them in a speakers program and directing a medical records company to send them certain patient information. Purdue’s plea deal calls for $8.3 billion in criminal fines and penalties, but the company is only liable for a fraction of that total — $225 million.

Teneobio may be best known for its pact with AbbVie and Gilead, but before its big break the bispecific player had licensed its antibodies for a different use: as binders in CAR-T therapies being developed by Poseida.

Now, the biotechs are expanding their partnership, with Poseida exercising four options to deploy Teneobio’s heavy chain only domain antibodies commercially.

The commercial licensing fees remained under wraps, but Teneobio is eligible for $250 million in milestones for these CAR-Ts against undisclosed targets.