Fate raises $57M; Biogen vet named CSO at Scholar Rock

November 22, 2016 09:23 AM EST

Fate raises $57M; Biogen vet named CSO at Scholar Rock

Shehla Shakoor

Chief Marketing Officer

Jeffrey Flier

San Diego-based Fate Therapeutics $FATE has raised $57 million through a private placement of shares. Redmile bought 2.8 million preferred shares at $13.30 each, which convert into 5 common shares. The rest of the group acquired 7.2 million common shares at $2.66 each. Fate says it plans to use most of the money on its pipeline work.

Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of faculty of medicine at Harvard, is joining Scholar Rock’s board and scientific advisory group. Biogen vet Alan J. Buckler, meanwhile, is stepping into the Cambridge, MA-based group as CSO.

The FDA has OK’d Allergan’s XEN Glaucoma Treatment System, which consists of the XEN45 Gel Stent and injector.

AUTHOR

Shehla Shakoor

Chief Marketing Officer

shehla@endpointsnews.com @ShehlaShakoor

Shehla Shakoor on LinkedIn

Ryan Watts, Denali CEO

August 6, 2020 08:42 AM EDTUpdated 02:14 PM

Deals

Biogen hands Denali $1B-plus in cash, $1B-plus in milestones to partner on late-stage Parkinson’s drug

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Biogen is handing over more than a billion dollars cash to partner with the up-and-coming neurosciences crew at Denali on a new therapy for Parkinson’s. And the big biotech is ready to pile on more than a billion dollars more in milestones — if the alliance is a success.

For Biogen $BIIB, the move on Denali’s small molecule inhibitors of LRRK2 puts them in line to collaborate on a late-stage program for DNL151, which is scheduled to start next year.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 86,700+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

August 7, 2020 07:04 AM EDT

Coronavirus

Covid-19 roundup: Novavax inks vaccine deals with Japan and India; AstraZeneca nearing agreements with Japan and Brazil

Max Gelman

Associate Editor

Following the release this week of promising early data for their Covid-19 vaccine candidate, Novavax has announced collaborations to supply it to two countries — Japan and India.

The Maryland-based biotech announced a deal Friday morning with Takeda to develop and manufacture up to 250 million doses per year of its adjuvanted vaccine. And late Thursday afternoon, Novavax entered into an agreement with the Serum Institute of India to provide up to 1 billion doses to India and low- and middle-income countries.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 86,700+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

August 7, 2020 06:55 AM EDT

R&D

In surprising setback, combo of Roche’s Tecentriq and chemo fails to help patients with triple-negative breast cancer

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

Roche broke ground last year when they secured the first FDA approval for a checkpoint therapy in triple-negative breast cancer, a notoriously difficult-to-treat indication that has been passed over by the wave of targeted therapies.

Now, though, doctors are puzzling over why a combination of drugs meant to make that therapy more potent instead appeared to make it less effective.

Roche said Thursday that in a Phase III trial, combining their PD-1/L1 checkpoint therapy Tecentriq with the chemotherapy paclitaxel, did not significantly improve progression-free survival for patients with locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer over giving those patients chemotherapy alone. In fact, patients on the Tecentriq-chemo arm had lower overall survival than patients on chemo, although the drugmaker cautioned that the trial was not powered for that endpoint and the data were immature.

ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Director of Regulatory Affairs

Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Salt Lake City, UT

view job offer post your job now

President Trump speaks with members of the media before boarding Marine One (AP Images)

August 6, 2020 04:01 PM EDT

Bioregnum

Coronavirus

'October is coming,' and everyone still wants to know if a Covid-19 vaccine will be whisked through the FDA ahead of the election

Right on the heels of a lengthy assurance from FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn that the agency will not rush through a quick approval for a Covid-19 vaccine, the President of the United States has some thoughts on timing he’d like to share.

In an exchange with Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera on Thursday, President Trump allowed that a vaccine could be ready to roll “sooner than the end of the year, could be much sooner.”

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 86,700+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Yvonne Greenstreet, incoming Alnylam president (Alnylam)

August 6, 2020 10:08 AM EDTUpdated 02:41 PM

People

Alnylam president Barry Greene leaves after 17 years, handing position over to Yvonne Greenstreet as biotech looks toward profitability

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

After 17 years helping Alnylam steer control of buzzy but unproven science they promised could change medicine, president Barry Greene is leaving the RNAi biotech just as that technology is beginning to hit prime time.

Leaving to “pursue outside interests in the biopharmaceutical industry,” the longtime executive will hand over the reins on October 1 to current COO Yvonne Greenstreet. Greenstreet, a former Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline executive, inherits the high-profile spot at a company that’s proven its tech can work in rare diseases but now faces the daunting task of turning a couple successes and a new mountain of cash into drugs that are broadly applicable and, crucially, profitable.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 86,700+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

August 6, 2020 07:32 AM EDTUpdated 10:06 AM

Coronavirus

Covid-19 roundup: 34 AGs call for ‘march-in’ rights on remdesivir; Hahn pleads with public to trust FDA's vaccine review

Endpoints Staff

A bipartisan group of 34 attorneys general have asked the federal government to bypass Gilead’s patent rights on remdesivir and begin scaling and distributing the Covid-19 antiviral, or to allow the states to do it themselves.

In a letter to HHS secretary Alex Azar, the AGs expressed frustrations over the $3,250 price tag Gilead placed on the the drug, citing the federal funding that went into its developments. And they noted the sustained difficulties hospitals have faced in getting supplies from either the California biotech or their contract manufacturer AmerisourceBergen.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 86,700+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

August 4, 2020 04:20 PM EDTUpdated August 5, 11:26 AM

Coronavirus

UPDATED: Novavax heralds the latest positive snapshot of early-stage Covid-19 vaccine — so why did its stock briefly crater?

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

High-flying Novavax $NVAX became the latest of the Covid-19 vaccine players to stake out a positive set of biomarker data from its early-stage look at its vaccine in humans.

Their adjuvanted Covid-19 vaccine was “well-tolerated and elicited robust antibody responses numerically superior to that seen in human convalescent sera,” the company noted. According to the biotech:

All subjects developed anti-spike IgG antibodies after a single dose of vaccine, many of them also developing wild-type virus neutralizing antibody responses, and after Dose 2, 100% of participants developed wild-type virus neutralizing antibody responses. Both anti-spike IgG and viral neutralization responses compared favorably to responses from patients with clinically significant COVID‑19 disease. Importantly, the IgG antibody response was highly correlated with neutralization titers, demonstrating that a significant proportion of antibodies were functional.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 86,700+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Director of Clinical Operations

Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Salt Lake City, UT

view job offer post your job now

Jan Hatzius (Photographer: Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

August 3, 2020 01:40 PM EDTUpdated August 4, 03:38 AM

R&D

Coronavirus

When will it end? Goldman economist gives late-stage vaccines a good shot at targeting 'large shares' of the US by mid-2021 — but the downside is daunting

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

It took decades for hepatitis B research to deliver a slate of late-stage candidates capable of reining the disease in.

With Covid-19, the same timeline has devoured all of 5 months. And the outcome will influence the lives of billions of people and a multitrillion-dollar world economy.

Count the economists at Goldman Sachs as optimistic that at least one of these leading vaccines will stay on this furiously accelerated pace and get over the regulatory goal line before the end of this year, with a shot at several more near-term OKs. That in turn should lead to the production of billions of doses of vaccines that can create herd immunity in the US by the middle of next year, with Europe following a few months later.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 86,700+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

August 3, 2020 10:53 AM EDT

R&D

Regulatory

J&J gets a fresh OK for esketamine, but is it really the game-changer for depression Trump keeps tweeting about?

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Backed by an enthusiastic set of tweets from President Trump and a landmark OK for depression, J&J scooped up a new approval from the FDA for Spravato today. But this latest advance will likely bring fresh scrutiny to a drug that’s spurred some serious questions about the data, as well as the price.

First, the approval.

Regulators stamped their OK on the use of Spravato — developed as esketamine, a nasal spray version of the party drug Special K or ketamine — for patients suffering from major depressive disorder with acute suicidal ideation or behavior.

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 86,700+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.