Car­los Paya

Oc­to­ber 11, 2018 was Black Thurs­day at Im­mune De­sign $IMDZ. That’s when the com­pa­ny broad­cast that its lead pro­gram for CMB305 com­bined with Roche’s Tecen­triq was a bust in re­lapsed syn­ovial sar­co­ma. CEO Car­los Paya then shift­ed fo­cus to G100 and slashed the staff by 20% as its stock plunged 34%. Shares closed at $1.85.

Days lat­er, dur­ing a din­ner meet­ing in Mu­nich while at­tend­ing ES­MO, a “se­nior ex­ec­u­tive” at Mer­ck — who had been col­lab­o­rat­ing with Im­mune De­sign for the last 3 years on Keytru­da — said the phar­ma gi­ant $MRK was in­ter­est­ed in switch­ing from li­cens­ing talks to buy­ing the bat­tered com­pa­ny out­right.

Paya’s im­me­di­ate an­swer: The com­pa­ny isn’t for sale — at least not at any­thing like the cur­rent stock price.

That was the be­gin­ning of a lengthy se­ries of back-and-forth bids and par­ries. With its share price on the ropes, the biotech steered away from 2 CVRs worth up to $85 mil­lion each, along with the ini­tial bid of $200 mil­lion in cash. 

Stephen Brady

The M&A deal for Im­mune De­sign is at the op­po­site end of a spec­trum lit up by block­buster deals for the likes of Kite or Loxo and AveX­is. There were no vast rich­es be­stowed on suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny ex­ecs. But at a time when a lot of biotechs are liv­ing with de­pressed share val­ues, it’s like­ly we’ll be see­ing more of these deals — based on terms like the un­pop­u­lar CVR, suc­cess­ful­ly pushed in the Cel­gene buy­out — as the ma­jor play­ers gear up with new ac­qui­si­tions.

But that doesn’t mean you have to give away the store.

Over 4 months of talks — while Im­mune De­sign was try­ing, un­suc­cess­ful­ly, to spark some out­side bids among a slate of prospects — Mer­ck and the lit­tle biotech grad­u­al­ly came to $5.85 per share as a win­ning bid. And it came down to pen­nies, with Im­mune De­sign push­ing for an ex­tra nick­el at the end — even as Mer­ck was ready to call their high­est, best of­fer. Dur­ing that stretch, Im­mune De­sign’s own self-as­sess­ment spurred the board to low­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty of suc­cess for G100 in fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma as it re­viewed its prospec­tive in­de­pen­dent fu­ture by the num­bers.

Jan ter Meulen

Cu­ri­ous­ly, the com­pa­ny’s SEC fil­ing on the ne­go­ti­a­tions avoids men­tion­ing which se­nior ex­ec­u­tives at Mer­ck were in­volved in the talks. The phar­ma gi­ant rarely shows its hand and clear­ly want­ed to keep as much of this be­hind closed doors as pos­si­ble.

Paya him­self comes away with a ter­mi­na­tion pack­age of $4,033,298, in­clud­ing $1.4 mil­lion for sev­er­ance. EVP of strat­e­gy and fi­nance Stephen Brady gets a pack­age worth $2.1 mil­lion. CSO Jan ter Meulen gets $1.9 mil­lion and CMO Sergey Yurasov slips in at $1.8 mil­lion.

Those num­bers won’t win any records, but af­ter the year that Im­mune De­sign has had, they’ll take it.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.