Yu­man­i­ty has found that “strate­gic al­ter­na­tive” it start­ed search­ing for ear­ly this year as its share price shriv­eled, forc­ing deep staff cuts.

The suf­fer­ing biotech has agreed to sell off most of its pipeline — in­clud­ing a par­tial­ly-held Phase I Parkin­son’s drug, dubbed YTX-7739, and un­part­nered dis­cov­ery-stage neu­ro­science prod­uct can­di­dates — to J&J for $26 mil­lion in cash. And it’s ex­e­cut­ing a re­verse merg­er with the pri­vate biotech Kine­ta, which will wind up with the pub­lic list­ing and Yu­man­i­ty’s Mer­ck-part­nered ALS/fron­totem­po­ral lo­bar de­gen­er­a­tion pro­gram.

YTX-7739 marks Janssen’s first clin­i­cal-stage Parkin­son’s as­set, a com­pa­ny spokesper­son told End­points News in an email. The drug caught the Big Phar­ma’s eyes be­cause of its “po­ten­tial to be the first oral-dis­ease mod­i­fy­ing ther­a­py in PD.” Janssen doesn’t in­tend to test it be­yond PD, at this time, un­like the orig­i­nal own­er’s am­bi­tions of po­ten­tial­ly test­ing the drug in glioblas­toma mul­ti­forme and oth­er dis­eases.

In the re­verse merg­er, Kine­ta will end up with 85% own­er­ship of the com­bined op­er­a­tions with its new name on the mar­quee from now on. The fu­ture of the new Kine­ta is ex­pect­ed to be sup­port­ed by a PIPE fi­nanc­ing of undis­closed amount from Growth & Val­ue De­vel­op­ment Inc.

Yu­man­i­ty was found­ed by the late Su­san Lindquist — an MIT pro­fes­sor and ex­pert in pro­tein fold­ing who died in 2016 — and Tony Coles about eight years ago, amid great hopes for their R&D ap­proach to some tough dis­ease. But it didn’t play out as they had hoped it would.

Yu­man­i­ty’s bat­tered stock $YMTX jumped 50% be­fore the open­ing bell Mon­day, to $2.12 apiece, but it’s still well be­low the $16 lev­el that Yu­man­i­ty trad­ed at a year ago. The biotech had $17.5 mil­lion in cash and in­vest­ments as of March 31.

Shawn Iado­na­to

“We are ex­cit­ed that our lead clin­i­cal-stage neu­rol­o­gy as­set and un­part­nered as­sets will con­tin­ue to be de­vel­oped and we are very en­thu­si­as­tic about Kine­ta’s in­no­v­a­tive on­col­o­gy pipeline,” Yu­man­i­ty CEO Richard Pe­ters said in a press re­lease.

The new Kine­ta will be led by Kine­ta’s ex­ecs: CEO Shawn Iado­na­to and Pres­i­dent Craig Philips.

Yu­man­i­ty pre­vi­ous­ly merged with cys­tic fi­bro­sis de­vel­op­er Pro­teosta­sis Ther­a­peu­tics in 2020, but the com­pa­ny’s stock cratered about 91% over the course of 2021 as the biotech strug­gled to ce­ment its turn­around sto­ry.

Craig Philips

Now, in its lat­est merg­er, Yu­man­i­ty will be a shell of it­self as the fo­cus will land on Kine­ta’s pre­clin­i­cal im­munother­a­py as­set known as KVA12.1, which is slat­ed to en­ter hu­man tri­als in the fourth quar­ter of this year, the com­pa­nies said on an in­vestor call Mon­day. The drug will even­tu­al­ly be test­ed in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er ther­a­pies across NSCLC, col­orec­tal and ovar­i­an can­cers.

A CD27-tar­get­ed mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body will en­ter a Phase I study in the fourth quar­ter of 2023, and IND-en­abling stud­ies will be­gin around the same time for a CD24-tar­get­ed mAb, the com­pa­nies said in the in­vestor pre­sen­ta­tion.

Kine­ta has been through mul­ti­ple changes over the years. The Seat­tle biotech once thought about mak­ing RIG-I ag­o­nist an­tivi­rals for the Zi­ka virus around the time of the 2016 Rio Olympics. It al­so want­ed to de­vel­op a vac­cine ad­ju­vant sys­tem for the flu. The biotech al­so went in­to the clin­ic for Las­sa fever and neu­ro­path­ic pain.

Kine­ta had se­cured $15 mil­lion up­front and had the po­ten­tial to reel in an­oth­er $505 mil­lion from Pfiz­er in a De­cem­ber 2018 deal.

“We sold the RIG-I pro­gram to Pfiz­er and are no longer in an ac­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion,” a Kine­ta spokesper­son told End­points News in an email.

An­oth­er Big Phar­ma deal came through in a $359 mil­lion tie-up signed with Roche’s Genen­tech in April 2018. The col­lab­o­ra­tion ex­pand­ed in Oc­to­ber 2020 for a new non-opi­oid for chron­ic pain. A Genen­tech op­tion on the Phase I as­set, KCP506, is on the cal­en­dar for the sec­ond half of 2023, Kine­ta said in the in­vestor pre­sen­ta­tion.

Last month, Yu­man­i­ty al­so agreed to ter­mi­nate its 30,000 square-foot lab­o­ra­to­ry lease in Boston. The lease was sched­uled to end in 2028, but that will now hap­pen on Ju­ly 31.

This sto­ry was up­dat­ed to cor­rect the name of the pres­i­dent of the new, com­bined Kine­ta, and in­clude com­ments from Janssen.

Codiak BioSciences has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, spelling an end to the employment of most executives, including founder Doug Williams, as the biotech says it “expects to consummate a sale.”

The eight-year journey at Codiak is nearing an end with Williams; CFO Linda Bain; medical chief David Mauro; scientific head Sriram Sathyanarayanan; legal and compliance chief Yalonda Howze; and SVP of HR Nicole Barna all packing up their bags in the first few days of April. Chief technology officer Konstantin Konstantinov will stay.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.