Near­ly a year af­ter Nan­jing, Chi­na-based In­xMed bagged its first-ever IND ap­proval, the com­pa­ny has raked in ¥130 mil­lion (about $19 mil­lion) in a Se­ries A+ to de­vel­op its fo­cal ad­he­sion ki­nase (FAK) small mol­e­cule in­hibitor pro­gram.

The fi­nanc­ing round — led by En­no­va­tion Ven­tures and Chi­na Growth Cap­i­tal and joined by In­noMed Cap­i­tal and Grand Yangtze Cap­i­tal — will al­low the com­pa­ny to push its lead drug, IN10018, through the clin­ic for mul­ti­ple can­cer in­di­ca­tions. The com­pa­ny said it pre­vi­ous­ly raised “tens of mil­lions” in US dol­lars in Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing.

“The suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of A+ round fi­nanc­ing would al­low us to ad­vance our clin­i­cal pro­gram and strength­en the com­pa­ny’s R&D ca­pa­bil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty,” In­xMed chair­man and CEO Za­iqi Wang said in a state­ment.

IN10018 is cur­rent­ly in Phase I test­ing for uveal melanoma and NRAS mu­tant metasta­t­ic melanoma; ovar­i­an and gas­tric can­cer; and pan­cre­at­ic can­cer and non-small cell lung can­cer. The com­pa­ny is fo­cused on com­bi­na­tion ther­a­pies, and in June read out ear­ly re­search da­ta that showed IN10018 can over­come drug re­sis­tance in can­cer pa­tients when ad­min­is­tered with KRAS G12C in­hibitors.

In March, In­xMed dosed the first pa­tients in a Phase Ib tri­al study­ing IN10018 both as monother­a­py and in com­bi­na­tion with Roche’s MEK in­hibitor co­bime­tinib, in pa­tients with metasta­t­ic uveal melanoma or NRAS mu­tant metasta­t­ic melanoma. That tri­al will in­clude 6 US sites and 3 in Aus­tralia.

Cur­rent­ly, no stan­dard-of-care treat­ment ex­ists for metas­ta­sized uveal melanoma. And chemother­a­pies or liv­er-di­rect­ed treat­ments don’t keep tu­mors un­der con­trol long-term. The biotech be­lieves that FAK in­hibitors could over­come the fi­brot­ic bar­ri­er and im­mune tol­er­ance, boost­ing tar­get­ed ther­a­py, chemother­a­py, im­muno-ther­a­py and ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py.

In­xMed al­so got the OK from the Chi­na Na­tion­al Med­ical Prod­ucts Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NM­PA) in De­cem­ber to launch Phase I test­ing of IN10018 in pa­tients with lo­cal­ly ad­vanced or metasta­t­ic gas­tric can­cer.

“We be­lieve IN10018 has broad po­ten­tial for the treat­ment of can­cer pa­tients and are very ex­cit­ed to re­ceive ap­proval from NM­PA to ini­ti­ate clin­i­cal tri­als of IN10018 in Chi­na. This is an­oth­er im­por­tant mile­stone for In­xMed, demon­strat­ing our abil­i­ty to con­duct clin­i­cal tri­als in both the U.S. and Chi­na and lever­age ad­van­tages of both coun­tries to cre­ate glob­al val­ue,” Wang an­nounced in De­cem­ber.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Novartis’ sickle cell drug, approved in 2019 and branded as Adakveo, has failed an ongoing Phase III, according to preliminary results.

The Swiss pharma giant unveiled early data from the ongoing STAND Phase III study on Friday, saying that crizanlizumab showed no statistically significant difference between the drug at two different dose levels compared to placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises that lead to a healthcare visit over the first year since being randomized into the trial.

Merck’s blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda has been handed another indication by the FDA.

The US regulator announced on Thursday that it has approved Keytruda to serve as an adjuvant treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is its fifth indication in NSCLC and 34th indication overall.

According to a Merck release, the approval is based on data from a Phase III trial, dubbed Keynote-091, which measured disease-free survival in patients who received chemotherapy following surgery. The data from Merck displayed that Keytruda cut down on the risk of disease recurrence or death by 27% versus placebo.

J&J and Legend Biotech’s next step in turning their CAR-T therapy Carvykti into a potential megablockbuster has succeeded, the companies said Friday.

Carvykti achieved the primary endpoint — progression-free survival — in an open-label Phase III study testing the treatment in second- to fourth-line multiple myeloma patients. The CARTITUDE-4 trial, for which there aren’t any hard data yet, represents the biggest development for Carvykti’s ability to compete with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Abecma since its approval last February.