Fo­cused on re­build­ing the pipeline, Ax­o­van­t's new crew as­sem­bles an­oth­er pre­clin­i­cal gene ther­a­py deal

Just a few weeks af­ter Vivek Ra­maswamy’s Ax­o­vant $AX­ON got a big boost out of its li­cens­ing pact with Ox­ford Bio­Med­ica for what is now called AXO-Lenti-PD, a gene ther­a­py de­signed to spur dopamine pro­duc­tion in the brain, the biotech is con­tin­u­ing its makeover with a new deal adding a fresh set of gene ther­a­pies to the pipeline.

This time Ax­o­vant is turn­ing to the Aus­tralian biotech Ben­itec $BN­TX for a dou­ble bar­reled ther­a­py that de­liv­ers an RNAi ther­a­py along­side a re­place­ment gene in­side the same vec­tor to treat ocu­lopha­ryn­geal mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy, a rare con­di­tion that cre­ates se­vere swal­low­ing is­sues. And Ax­o­vant gets 5 more pro­grams in the pack­age, which comes with an econ­o­my-sized up­front of $10 mil­lion.

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