Alan Barge

The in­vest­ment firm that launched an un­so­licit­ed takeover bid for Zymeworks has now brought in an As­traZeneca vet to help de­vise the fu­ture strat­e­gy — adding some heft to its $773 mil­lion of­fer.

Alan Barge, the for­mer head of on­col­o­gy at As­traZeneca, is join­ing All Blue Cap­i­tal as an on­col­o­gy drug de­vel­op­ment ad­vi­sor.

“I have worked close­ly with the team in de­vel­op­ing a busi­ness plan for Zymeworks that can cre­ate su­pe­ri­or val­ue,” Barge said in a state­ment. “I look for­ward to con­tribut­ing my ex­per­tise to help put Zymeworks back on track.”

All Blue, a rough­ly 5% share­hold­er in Zymeworks, sent the biotech’s board an of­fer days ago to buy it out, in cash, for $10.50 per share, with the ex­plic­it goal of “re­vers­ing the val­ue-de­struc­tive mea­sures that Zymeworks and its board of di­rec­tors im­ple­ment­ed over the past 12 months.”

The near­ly 20-year-old Cana­di­an biotech has been on a down­ward spi­ral since ear­ly 2021, even as it tried to get in­vestors ex­cit­ed about new da­ta around its HER2 bis­pe­cif­ic as well as mul­ti­func­tion­al an­ti­body plat­form more gen­er­al­ly. Since Ken­neth Gal­braith re­placed Ali Tehrani in Jan­u­ary, Zymeworks has hit the gas on changes, lay­ing off 25% of its staff and sell­ing shares at a dis­count in an at­tempt to right the ship.

Zymeworks has not is­sued any state­ment re­gard­ing the mat­ter since ac­knowl­edg­ing re­ceipt of the deal pro­pos­al. It al­so made no men­tion of All Blue’s of­fer in its 10-K fil­ing, on­ly giv­ing a straight­for­ward clin­i­cal and fi­nan­cial up­date.

All Blue said it hopes to dis­cuss the bid with Zymeworks “in good faith and in a time­ly fash­ion.” Should the ac­qui­si­tion go through, it added, Barge — who’s al­so a co-founder of Car­rick Ther­a­peu­tics and Aslan Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals — will re­main a board mem­ber of Zymeworks.

The FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on Tuesday gave the thumbs up — by a vote of 19-2 — that the FDA should require an Omicron-related component in this next season’s booster dose for Covid-19, which both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are hard at work on.

And while neither booster will likely be ready to go with adequate supplies for all American adults by the beginning of the next school year, the situation is still complex and fluid, with CBER Director Peter Marks telling the committee that it’ll take companies at least three months to ready their supplies for this expected next wave.

As the House-passed bill to cap the monthly price of insulin at $35 nationwide makes its way for a Senate vote soon, Sanofi announced Wednesday morning that beginning next month it will cut the monthly price of its insulins for uninsured Americans to $35, down from $99 previously.

The announcement from Sanofi, which allows the uninsured to buy one or multiple Sanofi insulins (Lantus, Insulin Glargine U-100, Toujeo, Admelog, and Apidra) at $35 for a 30-day supply effective July 1, follows House passage (232-193) of the monthly cap in March, with just 12 Republicans voting in favor of the measure.

As Astellas continues its drive to build out its gene therapy portfolio and capabilities, a subsidiary of the Japanese pharma company has entered into a collaboration with a little-known Pittsburgh biotech.

Astellas-owned Mitobridge and Generian Pharmaceuticals announced on Wednesday that they will work together in a new deal for “undruggable” protein targets. Generian will net an undisclosed upfront payment and could get up to $180 million in milestones, should anything from its platform prove successful, as well as single-digit royalties on global net sales.

Three months separated from a disappointing readout of its Covid-19 vaccine, Icosavax is back with what it calls positive topline data for a different VLP vaccine candidate — although investors aren’t impressed.

IVX-121, a vaccine candidate for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), appeared to generate “robust” immune responses among both young and older adults, as measured by neutralizing antibodies, and appeared generally well-tolerated, Icosavax reported.