Cel­gene scoops up fresh­man au­toim­mune start­up Delinia in $775M buy­out

Four months ago, At­las Ven­ture part­ner Saurabh Sa­ha set up shop at the new­born Delinia with a pre­clin­i­cal au­toim­mune drug, $35 mil­lion in start­up cash and a skele­ton crew. To­day, Cel­gene says it struck a deal to buy the start­up for $300 mil­lion up front and up to $475 mil­lion in mile­stones, adding a new drug for its au­toim­mune and in­flam­ma­tion pipeline.

Cel­gene is get­ting a pre­clin­i­cal lead pro­gram in the deal, which cen­ters pri­mar­i­ly on DEL106, as well as re­lat­ed sec­ond gen­er­a­tion pro­grams. DEL106 is an IL-2 mutein Fc fu­sion pro­tein de­signed to up­reg­u­late reg­u­la­to­ry T cells (Tregs), im­mune cells that are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing nat­ur­al self-tol­er­ance — and avoid­ing au­toim­mune dis­eases.

There’s a long list of dis­eases trig­gered when the bal­ance of Tregs and T ef­fec­tor cells is dis­rupt­ed and the im­mune sys­tem starts to at­tack healthy tis­sue. By ex­pand­ing Tregs, amp­ing up ac­tiv­i­ty, Sa­ha set out be­liev­ing that Delinia’s drug can re­store im­mune tol­er­ance and home­osta­sis, stop­ping dis­eases like lu­pus, Type 1 dis­eases and fi­brot­ic dis­eases like scle­ro­der­ma.

The deal clear­ly comes with a big cash pay­out to At­las — which has nev­er been re­luc­tant to take a good mul­ti­ple for ear­ly-stage as­sets like this — as well as Sofinno­va Part­ners, the Paris-based VC group that co-led the round. And there’s al­so plen­ty of up­side left if the tech works as hoped. For Cel­gene, it’s yet an­oth­er ac­qui­si­tion for a deal team that has been strik­ing a broad range of pacts over the years.

In a blog post this morn­ing, At­las’ Bruce Booth wrote:

Over the past decade, Cel­gene has built an im­pres­sive I&I port­fo­lio of both in­ter­nal­ly-dis­cov­ered and ex­ter­nal­ly-sourced pro­grams. Ote­zla (apremi­last) is their flag­ship I&I med­i­cine to­day (fastest pso­ri­a­sis drug to hit $1B in sales from launch) and was dis­cov­ered at Cel­gene; be­hind it are sev­er­al ad­di­tion­al home­grown pro­grams ear­li­er in de­vel­op­ment (e.g., im­munomod­u­la­tor CC-220 and an­ti-fi­brot­ic CC-90001). Cel­gene’s I&I pipeline al­so has sev­er­al high pro­file ex­ter­nal­ly-sourced ther­a­pies, in­clud­ing mon­gersen/GED-0301 (via a li­cense with No­gra Phar­ma) and ozan­i­mod (via ac­qui­si­tion of Re­cep­tos). They’ve al­so been at the fore­front of chang­ing the au­toim­mune treat­ment par­a­digm, such as with the re­cent deal with Anokion on tol­er­ance in­duc­tion. The Delinia pro­grams fit nice­ly in­to this grow­ing port­fo­lio, and com­ple­ment sev­er­al of these I&I ap­proach­es – which was a big dri­ver for Cel­gene’s over­all in­ter­est in the sto­ry.

Delinia ex­ecs Sa­ha and Jeff Tong, chair­man, told me in a fol­low-up in­ter­view that the ear­ly buy­out came up as they be­gan to strike up in­tro­duc­to­ry con­tacts aimed at es­tab­lish­ing some longterm talks with key play­ers in the field. Their sto­ry of a new tech­nol­o­gy that could have a pro­found im­pact on au­toim­mune dis­eases — even though it was still pre­clin­i­cal — at­tract­ed keen at­ten­tion from sev­er­al play­ers, in­clud­ing an un­ex­pect­ed in­bound call from one com­pa­ny that helped get the bid­ding go­ing for far more than what At­las had in­vest­ed in seed and ear­ly A cash.

“It was not a for­mal auc­tion,” Tong tells me, “but there was a very com­pet­i­tive lev­el of in­ter­est.”

Not yet de­cid­ed is what hap­pens with the Delinia team. Sa­ha says those dis­cus­sions are con­tin­u­ing with Cel­gene.

Co-founder and the new chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer at Delinia, Jef­frey Greve, is cred­it­ed with much of the dis­cov­ery work for their cy­tokine. Com­pa­ny co-founder Michael Rosen­blum is the as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of der­ma­tol­ogy at the UCSF School of Med­i­cine.

“Delinia is at the fore­front of ad­vanc­ing new ap­proach­es to treat­ing pa­tients with se­vere and de­bil­i­tat­ing au­toim­mune dis­eases,” said Ru­pert Vessey, FR­CP DPhil, Pres­i­dent of Re­search and Ear­ly De­vel­op­ment for Cel­gene Cor­po­ra­tion. “We look for­ward to pro­gress­ing DEL106 in­to the clin­ic next year.”

Forge Bi­o­log­ics’ cGMP Com­pli­ant and Com­mer­cial­ly Vi­able Be­spoke Affin­i­ty Chro­matog­ra­phy Plat­form

Forge Biologics has developed a bespoke affinity chromatography platform approach that factors in unique vector combinations to streamline development timelines and assist our clients in efficiently entering the clinic. By leveraging our experience with natural and novel serotypes and transgene conformations, we are able to accelerate affinity chromatography development by nearly 3-fold. Many downstream purification models are serotype-dependent, demanding unique and time-consuming development strategies for each AAV gene therapy product1. With the increasing demand to propel AAV gene therapies to market, platform purification methods that support commercial-scale manufacturing of high-quality vectors with excellent safety and efficacy profiles are essential.

Luke Miels, GSK chief commercial officer

GSK picks up Scynex­is' FDA-ap­proved an­ti­fun­gal drug for $90M up­front

GSK is dishing out $90 million cash to add an antifungal drug to its commercial portfolio, in a deal spotlighting the pharma giant’s growing focus on infectious diseases.

The upfront will lock in an exclusive license to Scynexis’ Brexafemme, which was approved in 2021 to treat a yeast infection known as vulvovaginal candidiasis, except in China and certain other countries where Scynexis already out-licensed the drug.

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Feng Zhang (Susan Walsh/AP Images)

In search of new way to de­liv­er gene ed­i­tors, CRISPR pi­o­neer turns to mol­e­c­u­lar sy­ringes

Bug bacteria are ruthless.

Some soil bacteria have evolved tiny, but deadly injection systems that attach to insect cells, perforate them and release toxins inside — killing a bug in just a few days’ time. Scientists, on the other hand, want to leverage that system to deliver medicines.

In a paper published Wednesday in Nature, MIT CRISPR researcher Feng Zhang and his lab describe how they engineered these syringes made by bacteria to deliver potential therapies like toxins that kill cancer cells and gene editors. With the help of an AI program, they developed syringes that can load proteins of their choice and selectively target human cells.

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Hugo Peris, Spiral Therapeutics CEO

Hear­ing-fo­cused biotech grabs trio of pro­grams from Oton­o­my's fire sale

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

Mathai Mammen, FogPharma's next CEO

Math­ai Mam­men hands in J&J's R&D keys to lead Greg Ver­dine’s Fog­Phar­ma 

In the early 1990s, Mathai Mammen was a teaching assistant in Greg Verdine’s Science B46 course at Harvard. In June, the former R&D head at Johnson & Johnson will succeed Verdine as CEO, president and chair of FogPharma, the same month the seven-year-old biotech kickstarts its first clinical trial.

After leading R&D at one of the largest drugmakers in the world, taking the company through more than half a dozen drug approvals in the past few years, not to mention a Covid-19 vaccine race, Mammen departed J&J last month and will take the helm of a Cambridge, MA biotech attempting to go after what Verdine calls the “true emperor of all oncogenes” — beta-catenin.

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Kevin Lee, Bicycle Therapeutics CEO

No­var­tis rides with Bi­cy­cle for new pact on tar­get­ed ra­dio­ther­a­pies

Novartis has inked a three-year deal with Bicycle Therapeutics to develop new targeted radiotherapies for cancer.

Novartis will pay Bicycle $50 million upfront, with downstream milestones adding up to a potential $1.7 billion. In exchange, Bicycle will use its virus-based platform to discover new bicyclic peptides, which it calls bicycles, that would be used for radiotherapies. Those bicycles would act as a homing beacon for radioactive isotopes, delivering them to cancer cells to kill the cells while limiting radiation to healthy tissue.

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CSL CEO Paul McKenzie (L) and CMO Bill Mezzanotte

Q&A: New­ly-mint­ed CSL chief ex­ec­u­tive Paul McKen­zie and chief med­ical of­fi­cer Bill Mez­zan­otte

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer re­ports ro­bust sales led by type 2 di­a­betes and pul­monary drugs, promis­es more to come high­light­ing obe­si­ty

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

Jeff Bluestone (R), Sonoma Biotherapeutics CEO

Jef­frey Blue­stone brings his start­up haul to $400M+, join­ing forces with Re­gen­eron on cell ther­a­pies

These days, when Jeffrey Bluestone gets together with his contemporaries in science, the conversation often turns to retirement plans.

But a little more than three years ago, Bluestone reached a momentous turning point in his career, exiting a prestigious post at UCSF, where he had spent decades in the scientific pursuit of new therapies. And it had nothing to do with retirement anytime in the near future.

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