Re­search­ing, cloning and breed­ing gene-edit­ed pigs are core to eGe­n­e­sis’ au­da­cious mis­sion to grow or­gans that can be xeno­trans­plant­ed in­to hu­mans. But per­haps un­sur­pris­ing­ly, lit­tle of that ac­tu­al­ly hap­pens at its Cam­bridge, MA labs.

Rather, the biotech works with ex­ter­nal par­ties for that part of the R&D and man­u­fac­tur­ing work. As eGe­n­e­sis ap­proach­es a fi­nal ver­sion of the gene-edit­ed or­gans that it will test in an­i­mals, it’s ac­quir­ing one of those part­ners and in­te­grat­ing it as a sub­sidiary.

ICBiotec’s 15-per­son team will stay in the Mid­west. In ad­di­tion to the ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties and equip­ment, eGe­n­e­sis al­so gains ac­cess to un­de­vel­oped land they can build on.

The way they work to­geth­er — with eGe­n­e­sis study­ing fi­brob­last cells in dish­es and turn­ing over gene-edit­ing pay­loads they de­vel­op in the lab to ICB for fur­ther test­ing — won’t change, said CEO Paul Sekhri; eGe­n­e­sis is mere­ly tran­si­tion­ing from the largest client of ICB to its own­er.

“They have a few oth­er cus­tomers that we’ll prob­a­bly en­sure that there’s a prop­er tran­si­tion, but to be hon­est with you I think we will need all of their ca­pa­bil­i­ties, which is one of the rea­sons why we did the trans­ac­tion in the first place,” he said.

De­spite pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed re­stric­tions, eGe­n­e­sis is still on track to fi­nal­ize the recipe for ge­net­i­cal­ly en­gi­neer­ing the pigs from which they will har­vest or­gans to test in an­i­mal mod­els for safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy — be­gin­ning with the kid­ney. In the US alone, there are al­most 100,000 peo­ple on the kid­ney wait­ing list but on­ly around 14,000 trans­plants per­formed each year.

“The re­search nev­er stopped, it just was slowed down a bit be­cause you just lit­er­al­ly couldn’t have the same con­cen­tra­tion of peo­ple in the lab as we had in the past,” Sekhri said.

The slog to­ward the clin­ic will in­volve many more reg­u­la­tor hur­dles, some of which would be un­fa­mil­iar even to the FDA as it deals with the eth­i­cal and tech­ni­cal im­pli­ca­tions of this sci-fi wor­thy un­der­tak­ing. The chief re­quire­ment for a green light to the clin­ic, Sekhri has pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed, is con­sis­tent pre­clin­i­cal re­sults among non-hu­man pri­mates.

Mov­ing ICB ca­pa­bil­i­ties in-house adds band­width for this cru­cial ex­er­cise, he added. Hav­ing bagged $100 mil­lion last No­vem­ber, the deal “doesn’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact our cash run­way.”

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.

Allogene Therapeutics said in an SEC filing today that French partner Servier has cut off its involvement in a partnership developing therapies directed against CD19, including the most advanced candidates in Allogene’s pipeline.

Shares of Allogene $ALLO, an outfit run by Kite vets Arie Belldegrun and research chief David Chang, fell by almost 10% on Wednesday, even as the San Francisco-based company said that Servier’s discontinuation “does not otherwise affect our current exclusive license for the development and commercialization of CD19 Products in the United States.”

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.