Hedge fund jumps in with Avoro activists in an attempt to derail Merck’s $11B Acceleron buyout

October 20, 2021 03:28 PM EDTUpdated October 21, 07:09 AM

Hedge fund jumps in with Avoro activists in an attempt to derail Merck's $11B Acceleron buyout

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Avoro Capital, which made its bones blowing up the Seagen-Immunomedics deal and then selling the smaller biotech for $21 billion, is getting an assist in its quest to derail Merck’s $11 billion buyout of Acceleron $XLRN.

Wednesday morning one of Acceleron’s biggest investors joined the opposition. Darwin Global Management, a hedge fund which owns about 4% of Acceleron, blasted the Merck deal, saying the Big Pharma is getting the company for billions less than what it’s worth. Earlier, Holocene Advisers, reportedly a top-20 investor in Acceleron, said it would not tender its stock after criticizing the $180-per-share deal.

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At the Inflection Point for the Next Generation of Cancer Immunotherapy

Willem Overwijk, Ph.D.

Vice President, Oncology Research, Nektar Therapeutics

While oncology researchers have long pursued the potential of cellular immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, it was unclear whether these therapies would ever reach patients due to the complexity of manufacturing and costs of development. Fortunately, the recent successful development and regulatory approval of chimeric antigen receptor-engineered T (CAR-T) cells have demonstrated the significant benefit of these therapies to patients.

December 4, 2021 06:00 AM EST

Weekly

All about Omicron; We need more Covid antivirals; GSK snags Pfizer’s vaccine exec; Janet Woodcock’s future at FDA; and more

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

The slate of products we’re offering here at Endpoints is continuing to grow, and it’s not just limited to editorial. If you haven’t, do visit your reader profile to see if there are any other weekly newsletters you’re interested in — as each comes with its own exclusive content. And don’t miss the publisher’s note from Arsalan Arif on Endpoints Studio, our latest avenue for advertising on Endpoints.

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Usama Malik

December 2, 2021 04:37 PM EST

Pharma

Ex-Immunomedics CFO charged with insider trading, faces up to 20 years in prison after allegedly tipping off girlfriend and relatives of a PhIII success

Max Gelman

Editor

The former CFO of Immunomedics, who helped steer the company to its $21 billion buyout by Gilead last year, has been charged with insider trading, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.

Usama Malik tipped off his then-girlfriend and four others that a Phase III study for Trodelvy would be stopped early four days before Immunomedics publicly announced the result in April 2020, DoJ alleged in its complaint. The individuals then purchased Immunomedics shares, selling them after the news broke and Immunomedics’ stock price doubled.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Lead Manager / Associate Director of Statistical Genetics

Deep Genomics

Boston, MA, USA

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Merck's new antiviral molnupiravir (Quality Stock Arts / Shutterstock)

December 2, 2021 09:02 AM ESTUpdated 7 hours ago

Pharma

Coronavirus

As Omicron spread looms, oral antivirals appear to be one of the best defenses — now we just need more

Paul Schloesser

Associate Editor

After South African scientists reported a new Covid-19 variant — dubbed Omicron by the WHO — scientists became concerned about how effective vaccines and monoclonal antibodies might be against it, which has more than 30 mutations in the spike protein.

“I think it is super worrisome,” Dartmouth professor and Adagio co-founder and CEO Tillman Gerngross told Endpoints News this weekend. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel echoed similar concerns, telling the Financial Times that experts warned him, “This is not going to be good.”

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December 2, 2021 07:03 AM EST

Deals

Watch out, Roche: Novartis inks $1.5B deal to chase down prominent Parkinson’s target

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Novartis is plopping down $150 million in cash to pick up an experimental Parkinson’s drug and grab an option to another, a move that puts it on an increasingly popular path in the field’s search for disease-modifying therapies.

Belgium’s UCB is its partner of choice, supplying two small molecule alpha-synuclein misfolding inhibitors in a deal that can add up to nearly $1.5 billion.

Out of the pair, UCB0599 is already in Phase II trials, making Novartis confident enough to pull the trigger on co-development and commercialization, including to foot half of the R&D bill. The pharma giant will make a decision on UCB7853 once UCB wraps the ongoing Phase I program.

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December 2, 2021 04:27 AM EST

Deals

Discovery

GlaxoSmithKline, Oxford unveil new partnership pitting buzzy R&D advances against neurological disease

Kyle Blankenship

Managing Editor

When GlaxoSmithKline trumpeted its return to neuroscience with a $700 million upfront deal with Alector this summer, it touted its early investments in functional genomics as a key guidepost for that deal. Now, the drug giant has partnered up with Oxford to hopefully add jet fuel to its hunt for breakthroughs in the brain.

GSK and Oxford have kickstarted a five-year collaboration aimed at spurring R&D breakthroughs across a range of hard-to-treat diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s through the use of genomic testing and machine learning, the partners said Wednesday.

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December 1, 2021 07:00 PM EST

Deals

Cell/Gene Tx

With only burns to show in gene therapy, Astellas inks deal with AAV specialist Dyno in push for a better capsid

Josh Sullivan

Associate Editor

On the hunt for a better AAV capsid for gene therapy, Eric Kelsic’s Dyno Therapeutics has set itself apart with its focus on machine learning to help speed discovery. Now, Japanese drugmaker Astellas — fresh off a slate of gene therapy burns — is taking a bet on Dyno as it looks to the future.

Astellas and Dyno will work together as part of an R&D pact to develop next-gen AAV vectors for gene therapy using Dyno’s CapsidMap platform directed at skeletal and cardiac muscle, the companies said Wednesday. Under the terms of the deal, Dyno will design AAV capsids for gene therapy, while Astellas will be responsible for conducting preclinical, clinical and commercialization activities for gene therapy product candidates using the capsids.

ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Executive Director - Data Analysis - Science & Technology

Alexandria Real Estate Equities

Pasadena, CA

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Incorporating External Data into Clinical Trials: Comparing Digital Twins to External Control Arms

Unlearn.AI

Most drug development professionals are familiar with the nerve-racking wait for the read-out of a large trial. If it’s negative, is the investigational therapy ineffective? Or could the failure result from an unforeseen flaw in the design or execution of the protocol, rather than a lack of efficacy? The team could spend weeks analyzing data, but a definitive answer may be elusive due to insufficient power for such analyses in the already completed trial. These problems are only made worse if the trial had lower enrollment, or higher dropout than expected due to an unanticipated event like COVID-19. And if a trial is negative, the next one is likely to be larger and more costly — if it happens at all.

Paul Hudson, Sanofi CEO (Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

December 1, 2021 06:26 AM ESTUpdated 06:37 AM

Deals

Cell/Gene Tx

Sanofi snaps up new vaccine candidate and devises mRNA game plan around it — but not for what you think

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Paul Hudson has spotlighted vaccines, immunology and dermatology as some of the top R&D focuses at Sanofi. His latest deal brings all of them together.

The French pharma giant isn’t sharing any financial details about the buyout of Origimm, a low-profile, private Austrian biotech whose technology promises to identify antigens causing skin disease and build vaccines against them. Their lead candidate targets acne vulgaris.

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