Mount­ing a pre­lim­i­nary ef­fort to catch up with oth­er phar­ma gi­ants in the on­colyt­ic virus space, As­traZeneca has found a part­ner in France’s Trans­gene.

In the deal, the biotech — which is al­ready al­lied with Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb and Pfiz­er/Mer­ck KGaA on com­bi­na­tion pro­grams with its in-house ther­a­peu­tic vac­cines — will come up with five new armed on­colyt­ic vac­cinia virus can­di­dates. As­traZeneca is start­ing small with $10 mil­lion up­front and just $3 mil­lion in pre­clin­i­cal suc­cess mile­stones, but promis­es an undis­closed li­cense fee for each clin­i­cal can­di­date they ul­ti­mate­ly de­cide to co-de­vel­op.

There’s as­pirin for col­orec­tal can­cer and statins for car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, but for the lead­ing cause of can­cer deaths glob­al­ly — lung can­cer — there’s no tool in the doc­tor’s ar­se­nal to ar­rest or pre­vent the fa­tal dis­ease (apart from smok­ing ab­sti­nence). But a new study sug­gests ge­nom­ic im­mune sys­tem dis­par­i­ties may play a cru­cial role in the de­vel­op­ment of lung can­cer, set­ting the stage for fresh ther­a­peu­tics that could arm the im­mune sys­tem to bet­ter fight can­cer­ous cells from an­chor­ing in the lungs.

An ar­gu­ment has been brew­ing on Capi­tol Hill and else­where that boils down to the the­o­ry that US tax­pay­ers are fronting bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of pub­lic re­search that trans­lates in­to ear­ly-stage prod­ucts that are lat­er sold to com­pa­nies, go on to win FDA ap­proval and then reap mil­lions or bil­lions in sales, al­though the gov­ern­ment nev­er sees a dime of those earn­ings.

With the help of a new Con­gres­sion­al Re­search Ser­vice (CRS) re­port pub­lished Fri­day and some oth­er ma­te­ri­als, Fo­cus can break down what’s hap­pen­ing.
1. Do tax­pay­ers pay for bil­lions in re­search?
Yes. In FY 2018, the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health (NIH) had a bud­get of more than $34 bil­lion to sup­port more than 300,000 sci­en­tists and re­search per­son­nel work­ing at over 2,500 in­sti­tu­tions across the US and abroad. And from FY 1998 to FY 2003, Con­gress dou­bled the NIH bud­get. The to­tal NIH ap­pro­pri­a­tion for FY 2019 is $39 bil­lion.
2. Does NIH re­search trans­late in­to ear­ly-stage prod­ucts?
Some­times. And here’s where the quan­tifi­ca­tion of NIH’s work gets tricky.

Re­mem­ber when re­searchers ap­plied CRISPR to ed­it genes of mice fe­tus­es while they are still in the womb, spar­ing them from death by liv­er dis­ease? The same team from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia has now test­ed the same idea — al­beit with a dif­fer­ent tech­nique — in ge­net­ic lung dis­eases.

In the bur­geon­ing world of gene edit­ing spawned by CRISPR, in utero treat­ment can be seen as a mid­point be­tween ear­ly em­bryo edit­ing (which pass­es the ge­net­ic al­ter­ations to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions) and edit­ing af­ter birth, which can be too late for pa­tients with cer­tain lethal dis­eases.

GSK’s Vi­iV is poised to take a bite out of Gilead’s HIV em­pire, af­ter its dual HIV reg­i­men — Dova­to — se­cured FDA ap­proval on Mon­day, af­ter the British drug­mak­er sub­mit­ted its mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion with a pri­or­i­ty re­view vouch­er (PRV) last Oc­to­ber, en­abling a speedy re­sponse from the US reg­u­la­tor.

Dova­to is an im­prove­ment over GSK’s ex­ist­ing two-drug reg­i­men Ju­lu­ca, which does not in­clude a nu­cle­o­side ana­log re­verse tran­scrip­tase in­hibitor or a ‘nuke.’ This fam­i­ly of drugs are used to thwart an en­zyme called re­verse tran­scrip­tase, which is used by the HIV virus to make copies of it­self in­side a healthy cell.

Last month, when Al­ler­gan’s $AGN once-tout­ed pipeline star ra­pastinel crashed and burned a slate of piv­otal de­pres­sion stud­ies, it looked like the ex­per­i­men­tal mod­u­la­tor of the NM­DA re­cep­tor would be shroud­ed in a cloak of in­vis­i­bil­i­ty — but re­searchers may have found a way to res­cue the ex­per­i­men­tal drug by re­pur­pos­ing it as a treat­ment for opi­oid de­pen­dence.

In the Unit­ed States, the cri­sis of opi­oid abuse, mis­use and over­dose — from pre­scrip­tion painkillers, hero­in, and syn­thet­ic opi­oids such as fen­tanyl — has reached epi­dem­ic pro­por­tions, caus­ing 130 deaths every day, ac­cord­ing to NIH es­ti­mates. Once in with­draw­al, ad­dicts are left to cope with a myr­i­ad of symp­toms in­clud­ing anx­i­ety, ag­i­ta­tion, sleep prob­lems, mus­cle aches, run­ny nose, sweat­ing, nau­sea, vom­it­ing, di­ar­rhea and opi­oid crav­ings.

The world’s wealth­i­est man is chip­ping in­to a new fund from one of the oth­er rich­est men on the plan­et to fi­nance a hunt for new, bet­ter and cheap­er ways to di­ag­nose Alzheimer’s.

E-tail mogul Jeff Be­zos — along­side his es­tranged wife MacKen­zie — added $15 mil­lion to the $35 mil­lion Bill Gates helped put to­geth­er for the di­ag­nos­tics work be­ing done by the Alzheimer’s Drug Dis­cov­ery Foun­da­tion.

Hav­ing spent more than two decades re­search­ing bi­ol­o­gy of the he­pa­to­cyte growth fac­tor (HGF), Pao­lo Michieli and his team at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tori­no, Italy forged a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nether­lands-based biotech Argenyx to cre­ate AgomAb Ther­a­peu­tics in 2017. On Wednes­day, the Bel­gian firm scored a €21 mil­lion (about $23.5 mil­lion) in­jec­tion for its slate of undis­closed pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams.

HGF — a pro­tein se­cret­ed by mes­enchy­mal cells — has long been stud­ied for its role in cell pro­lif­er­a­tion, sur­vival, motil­i­ty and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. It is un­der­stood to pro­mote wound heal­ing as well as tis­sue re­gen­er­a­tion in a num­ber of pre­clin­i­cal mod­els, chief Tim Knot­nerus said in an in­ter­view with End­points News.