→ Fritz Ger­ber, the 92-year-old ex-Roche CEO who steered the com­pa­ny to a ma­jor­i­ty stake in Genen­tech, has died. Ger­ber was CEO from 1978 to 1998, and chair­man for a few years af­ter that. The com­pa­ny cred­its him with tak­ing a lead­ing role in ac­quir­ing a ma­jor­i­ty stake in Genen­tech, a foun­da­tion­al move that led to the full buy­out 11 years ago. Deals to ac­quire PCR tech­nol­o­gy and the takeover of Boehringer Mannheim al­so set up a big play in di­ag­nos­tics, where Roche is a world leader to­day.

→ Can ADC Ther­a­peu­tics pull off an IPO in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic, af­ter try­ing and fail­ing ear­li­er? We’ll find out soon. The Eu­ro­pean biotech has set its range for an IPO at $16 to $18 a share, with plans to sell 7.3 mil­lion shares to in­vestors and up to $1.1 mil­lion shares to un­der­writ­ers. Al­to­geth­er they could reap as much as $151 mil­lion-plus, de­pend­ing on how it all shakes out. There has been a string of suc­cess­ful biotech IPOs since the pan­dem­ic hit hard in the US and Eu­rope, like­ly in­spir­ing a slate of com­pa­nies to brush off old fi­nanc­ing plans. ADC with­drew its IPO last fall, cit­ing “ad­verse mar­ket con­di­tions.”

→ The Re­gen­eron Ge­net­ics Cen­ter has struck a deal to col­lab­o­rate with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado’s Col­orado Cen­ter for Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine. In the deal, Re­gen­eron will se­quence 450,000 DNA sam­ples and cor­re­spond­ing health records from de-iden­ti­fied pa­tients. Their work will help in­form trans­la­tion­al re­search projects as well as back bet­ter pre­scrib­ing rou­tines.

→ Is­raeli biotech Pro­tal­ix now has de­tailed late-stage da­ta to back up its pitch to mar­ket its en­zyme-re­place­ment ther­a­py for Fab­ry dis­ease. The BRIDGE study, a sin­gle-arm switch-over study eval­u­at­ing the safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy of the com­pa­ny’s pe­gu­ni­gal­si­dase al­fa (or PRX-102) in up to 22 Fab­ry pa­tients pre­vi­ous­ly treat­ed with Take­da’s agal­si­dase al­fa (Re­pla­gal), showed sub­stan­tial im­prove­ment in re­nal func­tion with the Pro­tal­ix drug. In pa­tients who switched from the Take­da ther­a­py to PRX-102 — the mean im­prove­ment was from ‑5.90 mL/min/1.73m2/year while on agal­si­dase al­fa to -1.19 mL/min/1.73m2/year on PRX-102 in all pa­tients.

Da­ta from with two oth­er Phase III stud­ies are still ex­pect­ed, but Pro­tal­ix and part­ner Chiesi are plan­ning to sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion to mar­ket PRX-102 un­der the ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval path­way, de­spite Covid-19 and oth­er in­ter­rup­tions.

→ New­port Beach, CA-based cell ther­a­py play­er jCyte has li­censed the ex-US rights for its lead pro­gram to Japan’s San­ten for $50 mil­lion up­front. Dubbed Jcell, the prod­uct con­sists of al­lo­gene­ic hu­man reti­nal prog­en­i­tor cells to treat re­tini­tis pig­men­tosa, where gene mu­ta­tions lead to pro­gres­sive de­gen­er­a­tion of the reti­na. The US biotech can tap in­to a $12 mil­lion con­vert­ible debt and $190 mil­lion in mile­stones.

Rising monkeypox cases have put the US on high alert as it announces a national health emergency, which grants the government more power in its response.

The news comes as Bavarian Nordic continues to fill orders for its Jynneos vaccine and other companies – including Moderna – consider jumping into the vaccine race. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the US has allowed around 20 million doses of smallpox vaccine in its stockpile to expire.

Forget buyer’s remorse, Pfizer is likely feeling pretty good about its $11.6 billion Biohaven takeover deal following reports of a 57% sales boost for migraine med Nurtec.

Biohaven reported in Q2 results on Friday that it’s cleared the necessary antitrust hurdles to move forward with the sale of its calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) assets to Pfizer. However, because the company is “focused on workstreams related to the closing” of the deal, it did not host a call with analysts and investors.