Roche and Genen­tech have com­mit­ted $53 mil­lion to back a 10-year quest aimed at go­ing back to the draw­ing board to use new tech­nol­o­gy and fresh sci­en­tif­ic in­sights to gen­er­ate a pipeline of drugs for neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases.

Re­searchers from both Roche and its big South San Fran­cis­co hub — mix­ing teams from gRED and pRED this time — will mix it up with the sci­en­tists drawn to­geth­er for the Weill Neu­ro­hub — formed in 2019 as a joint re­search part­ner­ship in­volv­ing UCSF, Berke­ley and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton — in an ex­plo­ration of the field to de­vel­op new ther­a­pies for some of the tough­est dis­eases in drug R&D: Alzheimer’s, Parkin­son’s, Hunt­ing­ton’s, ALS and autism.

Roche has had plen­ty of set­backs to re­port on that front over the years, like every oth­er big play­er that’s com­mit­ted large sums to dis­eases that af­flict mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. And the crew here ap­pears com­mit­ted to find­ing drugs that can do more than in­flu­ence symp­toms or slight­ly bend the curve of dis­ease pro­gres­sion. They’ve all vot­ed to back a long-await­ed rev­o­lu­tion.

“This part­ner­ship is not about pick­ing off the low-hang­ing fruit — it’s about trans­form­ing the treat­ment of neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric dis­ease, which will re­quire long-term in­vest­ment and the flex­i­bil­i­ty to go where the sci­ence guides us,” says neu­ro ex­pert Stephen Hauser from UCSF.

“While all these dis­eases of the brain or CNS are in­cred­i­bly chal­leng­ing,” said Ehud Isacoff, pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy at UC Berke­ley, “it is re­al­ly hard to imag­ine that sig­nif­i­cant progress will not be made in each of these ar­eas, be­cause the sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­tise and pas­sion across the teams are so strong. What I am hop­ing for is that some of these things lead to a break­through where, even­tu­al­ly, we are look­ing back a decade or two from now and say­ing, ‘Holy moly! That is when we turned the cor­ner on neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­ease.’ That’s the dream.”

Back in April 2019, Amgen quietly shut down a Phase I trial for a drug named AMG 986. There was no safety concern; the molecule just didn’t hit the mark on helping the small band of heart failure patients who received it.

A small biotech, though, believes it would stand a chance in the burgeoning anti-aging field.

BioAge Labs has licensed AMG 986 — now renamed BGE-105 — with plans to parlay the existing IND into a quick Phase I trial teasing out the pharmacodynamic effects and set the stage for mid-stage tests focused on acute muscle indications.

Anand Shah has served the American public in a unique way, crisscrossing over the last two administrations between serving as an attending radiation oncologist focused on prostate cancer at NIH, serving as CMO at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, and most recently, leading the FDA’s operations on medical and scientific affairs from within the commissioner’s office.

Shah, who stepped down from the FDA in January, caught up with Endpoints News in a phone interview on Tuesday afternoon, offering his thoughts on the agency’s latest decision to pause the J&J vaccinations in the US, and reflecting on his time at an agency during this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

As co-director of an experimental cellular therapy process development and manufacturing group at UCSF specializing in T cell therapies for autoimmune conditions, Jonathan Esensten has learned a lot about the challenges involved when his group hand-fashions a cell therapy. Esensten — who was a postdoc in Wendell Lim’s lab and counts the legendary Jeffrey Bluestone as a mentor — gives them all high marks at being great at what they do, but time and again there are variations in the treatments they construct.

Editor’s note: Interested in following biopharma’s fast-paced IPO market? You can bookmark our IPO Tracker here.

The latest biotech-SPAC deal has arrived, and it’s dancing its way to Nasdaq to the tune of several hundred million dollars.

Tango Therapeutics and its CRISPR-focused search for new cancer genes is reverse merging with Boxer Capital’s blank-check company, the biotech announced Wednesday morning. With a spotlight on three lead programs, Tango expects total proceeds to equal about $353 million in the deal, which includes the roughly $167 million held in the SPAC and an additional $186 million in PIPE financing.

When Min Li took the wraps off a $100 million round for his Bob Nelsen-backed startup last December — as with most biotech CEOs when they launch — he left a couple cards unturned.

Keen to build a first-of-its-kind neuro play in China, the GlaxoSmithKline R&D vet already had a good idea of which assets he wanted to in-license for SciNeuro, conducting Zoom negotiations from the East Coast office that he’s been somewhat stuck in since JP Morgan early in the year. Now, he’s finally ready to shine a spotlight on the first program: a slate of alpha-synuclein targeted antibody therapies from Eli Lilly.

A year ago, Stéphane Bancel would have described Moderna as cautious — walking step-by-step to investigate whether mRNA vaccines could prevent a host of viruses. Then the pandemic hit, and the Cambridge, MA-based biotech got a multibillion-dollar windfall to produce the world’s second-ever authorized mRNA vaccine in a matter of months.

What’s next? Bancel is planning a big acceleration and expansion of the rest of the pipeline, including the company’s Phase III-ready candidate for cytomegalovirus (CMV), which was the lead program before Covid-19 came around.