→ For­mer HHS Sec­re­tary Tom­my Thomp­son is ex­pand­ing his biotech re­sume. Thomp­son has signed as a board mem­ber at New York-based Tyme Tech­nolo­gies, which is work­ing on a pipeline of can­cer ther­a­pies. Thomp­son is al­so chair­man of Ther­a­peu­tic­sMD, which re­cent­ly won a re­ver­sal of the FDA’s de­ci­sion to re­ject its lead ther­a­py and per­mit a full re­view of its mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion.

→ Medi­gene AG has gained a reg­u­la­to­ry green light to be­gin the first Phase I/II study of its TCR-mod­i­fied T cell ther­a­py MDG1011. “With our spe­cif­ic study de­sign, we are able to eval­u­ate our T cell ther­a­py si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in var­i­ous dis­eases and to gen­er­ate da­ta in three hema­to­log­i­cal in­di­ca­tions in par­al­lel,” said Kai Pinck­er­nell, the CMO at Medi­gene.

→ Bloomberg re­ports that J&J is scout­ing for po­ten­tial buy­ers of its ster­il­iza­tion prod­ucts di­vi­sion, which could be worth up to $2 bil­lion.

→ Merck — one of the last big pharma bastions in the beleaguered field of antibiotic drug development — on Friday said the FDA had signed off on using its combination drug, Recarbrio, with hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia. The drug could come handy for use in hospitalized patients who are afflicted with Covid-19, who carry a higher risk of contracting secondary bacterial infections. Once SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid-19, infects the airways, it engages the immune system, giving other pathogens free rein to pillage and plunder as they please — the issue is particularly pertinent in patients on ventilators, which in any case are breeding grounds for infectious bacteria.

In a bewildering twist to the long-suffering market for antibiotics — there has actually been a bidding war for an antibiotic company: Tetraphase.

It all started back in March, when the maker of Xerava (an FDA approved therapy for complicated intra-abdominal infections) said it had received an offer from AcelRx for an all-stock deal valued at $14.4 million.

The offer was well-timed. Xerava was approved in 2018, four years after Tetraphase posted its first batch of pivotal trial data, and sales were nowhere near where they needed to be in order for the company to keep its head above water.

Lonza chairman Albert Baehny took his time headhunting a new CEO for the company, making it absolutely clear he wanted a Big Pharma or biotech CEO with a good long track record in the business for the top spot. In the end, he went with the gold standard, turning to Roche’s ranks to recruit Pierre-Alain Ruffieux for the job.

Ruffieux, a member of the pharma leadership team at Roche, spent close to 5 years at the company. But like a small army of manufacturing execs, he gained much of his experience at the other Big Pharma in Basel, remaining at Novartis for 12 years before expanding his horizons.

Another Big Pharma is entering the Covid-19 antibody hunt.

AbbVie has announced a collaboration with the Netherlands’ Utrecht University and Erasmus Medical Center and the Chinese-Dutch biotech Harbour Biomed to develop a neutralizing antibody that can treat Covid-19. The antibody, called 47D11, was discovered by AbbVie’s three partners, and AbbVie will support early preclinical work, while preparing for later preclinical and clinical development. Researchers described the antibody in Nature Communications last month.

There haven’t been a lot of big venture rounds for biotech companies looking to run a Phase II study in Alzheimer’s.

The field has been a disaster over the past decade. Amyloid didn’t pan out as a target — going down in a litany of Phase III failures — and is now making its last stand at Biogen. Tau is a comer, but when you look around and all you see is destruction, the idea of backing a startup trying to find complex cocktails to swing the course of this devilishly complicated memory-wasting disease would daunt the pluckiest investors.