It hasn’t been hard to see where Sean Nolan went look­ing for the tal­ent need­ed to make Taysha in­to a lead­ing play­er in the bustling gene ther­a­py field.

Sean Nolan

Mon­day morn­ing the com­pa­ny, where Nolan holds the chair­man’s post, put out word that Taysha re­cruit­ed the ex-CMO and ex-CFO at AveX­is to come on­to the board in the wake of a $94 mil­lion crossover raise.

In this en­vi­ron­ment, it’s yet an­oth­er sign that Nolan and the top crew could have their sights set on an IPO as the biotech up­start com­pletes the full team.

Tapped for the board are Suku­mar Na­gen­dran, who had been CMO at AveX­is when No­var­tis stepped in to buy out the SMA com­pa­ny for $8.7 bil­lion. Then there’s the num­bers guy, Phillip Do­nen­berg, who gained ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing with the SEC that could soon come in handy.

They’re join­ing a full boat of ex­ecs lead­ing the way at the Dal­las-based biotech, in­clud­ing: Bio­Marin vet Suyash Prasad as CMO; an­oth­er AveX­is alum Kam­ran Alam as CFO; AveX­is’ for­mer BD chief Dan Ja­ni­ak and Sean McAu­li­ffe, who helped bring out Zol­gens­ma and now holds the top com­mer­cial post at Taysha.

They’re all work­ing with CEO RA Ses­sion II, who came out of the en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence pro­gram at UT South­west­ern, which is pro­vid­ing the gene ther­a­py can­di­dates for Taysha. — John Car­roll

I-Mab re­leas­es first half 2020 re­sults with much tri­al da­ta soon ex­pect­ed

The Chi­nese biotech I-Mab Bio­phar­ma $IMAB re­leased its first half 2020 fi­nan­cial re­sults, giv­ing a win­dow in­to the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny.

Among the most news­wor­thy as­pects of the up­date in­clud­ed the pre­view of sev­er­al tri­al read­outs to come be­fore the end of the year, in­clud­ing an ex­pect­ed IND ap­proval in Chi­na for a hor­mone ther­a­py in pe­di­atric growth hor­mone de­fi­cien­cy. The com­pa­ny will like­ly ini­ti­ate a Phase III tri­al for the can­di­date, ef­tan­so­ma­t­ropin, soon af­ter­wards.

I-Mab al­so di­vulged that its cash po­si­tion was $221 mil­lion at the end of June, as op­posed to about $175 mil­lion at the start of the year. The biotech re­port­ed a loss of $82.5 mil­lion over the last six months, as op­posed to about $125 mil­lion in the first six months of 2019.

The com­pa­ny’s busi­ness mod­el is rather un­usu­al, as it con­ducts proof-of-con­cept tri­als in the US, and then us­es the da­ta for tri­als in Chi­na. Once the drug is clin­i­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed in the US, I-Mab re­tains Chi­nese rights for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment and glob­al out-li­cens­ing.

It’s a bet that’s paid off so far, as I-Mab raised over $400 mil­lion in pri­vate fund­ing be­fore go­ing pub­lic in Jan­u­ary with a $107.3 mil­lion IPO raise. I-Mab’s stock price has since risen over 150% from a $14 open­ing price to over $31 in ear­ly Mon­day trad­ing. — Max Gel­man

Ar­rakis us­es pho­toaffin­i­ty la­bel­ing to iden­ti­fy RNA bind­ing sites

Ar­rakis Ther­a­peu­tics read out da­ta on the abil­i­ty of its PEARL-seq tech­nol­o­gy to iden­ti­fy bind­ing sites in RNA mol­e­cules — a step for­ward for the de­vel­op­ment of its pipeline of RNA-tar­get­ed drugs.

Jen­nifer Pet­ter

“PEARL-seq rep­re­sents our in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach to es­tab­lish tar­get en­gage­ment, iden­ti­fy bind­ing sites on the RNA, and learn about se­lec­tiv­i­ty across the tran­scrip­tome,” Ar­rakis founder and CSO Jen­nifer Pet­ter said in a state­ment. “As part of Ar­rakis’ mis­sion to drug RNA, we are build­ing and re­fin­ing the tools need­ed to dis­cov­er and de­sign rSMs against im­por­tant RNA tar­gets in­volved in dis­ease.”

The da­ta show that the tech — which stands for pho­toaffin­i­ty eval­u­a­tion of RNA Lig­a­tion-se­quenc­ing — can iden­ti­fy lig­and bind­ing sites and se­lec­tiv­i­ty “across RNAs in a sin­gle ex­per­i­ment,” ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny. Ar­rakis’ pipeline in­cludes var­i­ous RNA-tar­get­ing mech­a­nisms, in­clud­ing ones for can­cer, car­dio­vas­cu­lar con­di­tions, neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion and rare dis­eases.

“The re­search showed that pho­toaffin­i­ty la­bels could be teth­ered to rSMs with­out dis­rupt­ing the bind­ing in­ter­ac­tions be­tween the rSM and the RNA. Up­on ac­ti­va­tion with UV light, the rSM ir­re­versibly crosslinks to the RNA, en­abling map­ping of the in­ter­ac­tion by se­quenc­ing analy­sis,” the com­pa­ny stat­ed. — Nicole De­Feud­is

Five Prime Therapeutics has finalized a plan to take their comeback gastric cancer drug into late-stage studies.

The South San Francisco-based biotech released full Phase II data for bemarituzumab on Friday, which Five Prime said in November met all of its pre-specified efficacy endpoints in a topline readout. Now, the company is announcing it plans to launch a Phase III trial for the program in 2021. Following November’s readout, the future of bemarituzumab had not yet been finalized.

As more and more players pursue cell and gene therapies, companies are looking for ways to keep up on the manufacturing end.

On Thursday, Precision Medicine Group took the wraps off a deal to buy out Project Farma, a bioengineering services firm that supports the manufacturing and scale-up of cell and gene therapies. Project Farma will join Precision for Medicine, PMG’s research and development services arm.