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.

During BIO this year, I had a chance to moderate a panel among some of the top tech experts in biopharma on their real-world use of artificial intelligence in R&D. There’s been a lot said about the potential of AI, but I wanted to explore more about what some of the larger players are actually doing with this technology today, and how they see it advancing in the future. It was a fascinating exchange, which you can see here. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. — John Carroll

As several Big Pharma players secure biotech partners in the oncolytic virus space for new immuno-oncology combos, Cowen and Perceptive Advisors have come out with their own bet on a startup that promises to shine.

The marquee investors are joining MPM, Deerfield, Celgene, Astellas, Arkin and UBS in backing the drug developer, Oncorus, which will now deploy the $79.5 million in Series B cash toward clinical development of its lead program. Other new investors include Surveyor Capital, Sphera Funds, IMM Investment, QUAD Investment Management, UTC Investment, SV Investment Corp and Shinhan Investment-Private Equity, the last five of which are Korean-based funds.

Nearly two years after making its public debut, UK-based NuCana’s mission to make chemotherapies more potent and safer was dealt a blow, after a pivotal study testing its lead experimental drug halted enrollment in a hard-to-treat advanced form of cancer, following a futility analysis.

The drug, Acelarin, is being evaluated for use in metastatic pancreatic cancer patients who were not considered suitable for combination chemotherapy. In the late-stage ACELARATE study — which compared the experimental drug against the chemotherapy gemcitabine — 200 patients had been enrolled by the sponsor, Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, before an analysis from an independent safety and data monitoring panel suggested the study’s main goal would not be met.