Dan­ish drug­mak­er Gen­mab A/S is off to the races with per­haps one of the biggest biotech pub­lic list­ings in decades, hav­ing reaped over $500 mil­lion on the Nas­daq, as it po­si­tions it­self as a bonafide play­er in an­ti­body-based can­cer ther­a­pies.

The com­pa­ny, which has long served as J&J’s $JNJ key part­ner on the block­buster mul­ti­ple myelo­ma ther­a­py Darza­lex, has as­sert­ed it has been look­ing to launch its own pro­pri­etary prod­uct — one it owns at least half of — by 2025.

There are at least five such prod­ucts — which Gen­mab has fond­ly chris­tened “knock-your-socks-off an­ti­bod­ies” — in­clud­ing an an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate (ADC) called ti­so­tum­ab ve­dotin be­ing co-de­vel­oped with Seat­tle Ge­net­ics $SGEN, and an­oth­er ADC called enapotam­ab ve­dotin that the com­pa­ny ful­ly owns. Then there’s an an­ti­body tar­get­ing sol­id tu­mors called Hexa­Body-DR5/DR5 as well as a bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body en­gi­neered to fight B-cell ma­lig­nan­cies called Duo­Body-CD3xCD20 — which are al­so ful­ly owned by Gen­mab. Fi­nal­ly, there’s an­oth­er bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body — Duo­Body-PD-L1x4-1BB — whose de­vel­op­ment is split with BioN­Tech.

Apart from these, the Copen­hagen based com­pa­ny has a string of oth­er part­ners: Gilead $GILD, No­vo Nordisk $NVO, Am­gen $AMGN, Im­mat­ics and ADC Ther­a­peu­tics.

On Thurs­day, the Copen­hagen-based com­pa­ny said it gen­er­at­ed gross pro­ceeds of $505,875,000 by sell­ing 2,850,000 or­di­nary shares of Gen­mab in the form of 28.5 mil­lion Amer­i­can De­posi­tary Shares (ADSs) at a price of $17.75 per ADS. It is set to trade un­der the sym­bol “GMAB”.

Last week, the com­pa­ny had set out the po­ten­tial terms of its IPO: with a plan to sell 27.8 mil­lion shares at $18.11 per ADS, which would have trans­lat­ed to a mar­ket cap of a whop­ping $11.8 bil­lion.

Darza­lex, which raked in $90 mil­lion in mile­stone pay­ments and $262 mil­lion in roy­al­ties and ac­count­ed for near­ly 76% of Gen­mab’s 2018 rev­enue, cur­rent­ly is be­ing test­ed in mul­ti­ple tri­als in a bid to ex­pand its use. Mean­while, com­pe­ti­tion from Sanofi $SNY is loom­ing.

Mike Grey Linkedin

Gen­mab’s oth­er mar­ket­ed treat­ment Arz­er­ra — part­nered with No­var­tis $NVS — has not fared as well. Last year, the Swiss drug­mak­er record­ed net sales of $26 mil­lion — gen­er­at­ing rough­ly $5 mil­lion in roy­al­ties for Gen­mab. The drug has been cleared for use in chron­ic lym­pho­cyt­ic leukemia and is now be­ing stud­ied for mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis.

There were an­oth­er cou­ple of small­er IPO pric­ings on Wednes­day.

Af­ter wrest­ing con­trol of two liv­er drugs from Shire and prim­ing them for piv­otal tri­als — Mirum Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ Mike Grey has steered the Cal­i­for­nia biotech to a $75 mil­lion IPO. The two drugs — mar­al­ix­i­bat and volix­i­bat — cost Mirum $7.5 mil­lion up­front. Shire — now part of Take­da — had wa­gered $260 mil­lion on Lu­me­na (where Grey was once CEO) large­ly on the promise of these two as­sets, which both tar­get the api­cal sodi­um-de­pen­dent bile acid trans­porter, a pro­tein ex­pressed in the small in­tes­tine.

Bob Gould Ful­crum

The com­pa­ny — which has raised $120 mil­lion Se­ries A cash since launch­ing last No­vem­ber — has sold 5 mil­lion shares at $15/share — at the mid­point of its range of $14 to $16. It is set to trade on the Nas­daq on Thurs­day un­der the sym­bol “MIRM”.

While on the east coast, Ful­crum Ther­a­peu­tics has raised gross pro­ceeds of $72 mil­lion, by sell­ing 4.5 mil­lion shares at $16/share — the low­er end of its range of $16 to $18.

The Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny — which raised $80 mil­lion in a Se­ries B round to shep­herd the first of its gene-reg­u­lat­ing small mol­e­cules in­to the clin­ic last Sep­tem­ber — is run by biotech vet­er­an Bob Gould who for­mer­ly served as Epizyme’s chief. The com­pa­ny is set to trade on Thurs­day un­der the sym­bol “FULC” on the Nas­daq.

So­cial im­age: Shut­ter­stock

Medical animation has in recent years become an increasingly important tool for conveying niche information to a varied audience, particularly to those audiences without expertise in the specialist area. Science programmes today, for example, have moved from the piece-to-camera of the university professor explaining how a complex disease mechanism works, to actually showing the viewer first-hand what it might look like to shrink ourselves down to the size of an ant’s foot, and travel inside the human body to witness these processes in action. Effectively communicating a complex disease pathophysiology, or the novel mechanism of action of a new drug, can be complex. This is especially difficult when the audience domain knowledge is limited or non-existent. Medical animation can help with this communication challenge in several ways.
Improved accessibility to visualisation
Visualisation is a core component of our ability to understand a concept. Ask 10 people to visualise an apple, and each will come up with a slightly different image, some apples smaller than others, some more round, some with bites taken. Acceptable, you say, we can move on to the next part of the story. Now ask 10 people to visualise how HIV’s capsid protein gets arranged into the hexamers and pentamers that form the viral capsid that holds HIV’s genetic material. This request may pose a challenge even to someone with some virology knowledge, and it is that inability to effectively visualise what is going on that holds us back from fully understanding the rest of the story. So how does medical animation help us to overcome this visualisation challenge?

For a pharma company with about $5 billion in revenue, a couple of respectably sized blockbuster drugs on the market and some high-profile partners like Amgen, Belgium’s UCB has kept an unusually low profile on the pipeline side of things over the years.
Until now.
Just days after striking a $2.1 billion deal to buy Ra Pharmaceuticals and its C5 rival to Soliris, UCB is posting positive top-line Phase III results for a dual IL-17 inhibitor that it’s steering into one of the most competitive commercial spaces in the industry. And despite plenty of obvious challenges as they struggle to roll out Evenity with Amgen and patent expirations loom on its franchise drugs, including Cimzia, the company just may be ready to tackle some of the biggest players on the planet.
In their first of 3 Phase III studies for bimekizumab, researchers touted top-line wins on statistically significant results on clearing plaque psoriasis, including a victory over J&J’s IL-23 contender Stelara on key endpoints. The drug targets both IL-17A and IL-17F, a modification on the IL-17A strategy laid out for Taltz (Eli Lilly) and Cosentyx (Novartis). And the new group also includes J&J’s Tremfya and AbbVie’s Skyrizi.
We don’t know the PASI90 and IGA scores — but UCB knows that with the kind of heavyweight competition it faces with Novartis and others, marginal gains for patients won’t stack up. So we’ll be watching for the hard numbers. And there’s another head-to-head with Cosentyx that will play a big role in pushing up analysts’ projections on peak sales, which currently fall well short of blockbuster status.
UCB hasn’t exactly been in the spotlight for the last few years, but it’s in a position now that the company has to win some respect in R&D, with blockbuster projects that can keep investors’ attention at a time the industry is experiencing booming R&D development efforts around the planet.
It hasn’t been easy. There was a setback on a lupus drug partnered with Biogen. But there have been some advances, with a deal to buy Proximagen’s NDA-ready nasal spray therapy USL261, designed as a rescue therapy for acute repetitive seizures, for $150 million in cash and another $220 million in sales and regulatory milestones. There was even a report that the company was kicking the deflated tires at Acorda, though nothing came of that.
Late last year UCB also committed to spend up to £200 million on a new R&D hub in the UK.
That may not translate into a lot of excitement right now, but they’re trying. And there’s a subtle promise that more deals may be in the works.