→ Copen­hagen-based IO Biotech said that its can­cer vac­cine has passed the high bar set for its in­ter­im fu­til­i­ty analy­sis in Phase II, show­ing “a sub­stan­tial­ly high­er” over­all re­sponse rate among non-small cell lung can­cer pa­tients when com­bined to Keytru­da than the PD-1 alone —which ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny in­duced his­tor­i­cal ORR of 39%.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors will car­ry on eval­u­at­ing IO-102 plus Keytru­da, with fi­nal da­ta ex­pect­ed by the end of the year. The can­di­date is an IDO-de­rived pep­tide se­quence de­signed to stir up T cell ac­tion against IDO — the en­zyme tar­get for an ill-fat­ed class of small mol­e­cule drugs. “In that sense you have flags on the sur­face of im­mune sup­pres­sive cells and [tu­mor cells] that our T cells can rec­og­nize and there­by ac­tu­al­ly get rid of those IDO pos­i­tive cells, hence a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent MOA than IDO SMI,” CEO Mai-Britt Zoc­ca told End­points News.

IO Biotech is fund­ing the study while part­ner Mer­ck gets to share the re­sults. A cock­tail of IO102 and IO103 — which di­rects T cells against PD-L1 — is be­ing test­ed in com­bi­na­tion with Op­di­vo for melanoma pa­tients.

→ A month af­ter join­ing the hunt for an­ti­bod­ies that could treat Covid-19, Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy is en­list­ing WuXi Bi­o­log­ics to do the cell-line de­vel­op­ment, process and for­mu­la­tion de­vel­op­ment as well as ini­tial man­u­fac­tur­ing. The San Fran­cis­co-based start­up said it’s iden­ti­fied a num­ber of mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies that bind to SARS-CoV-2, iso­lat­ed from in­di­vid­u­als who had sur­vived SARS. A deal with WuXi — which gives the pow­er­ful CRO rights to com­mer­cial­ize in Chi­na — po­si­tions them for quick ad­vance­ment, CEO George Scan­gos said.

→ As­traZeneca has di­vest­ed an­oth­er gas­troin­testi­nal drug, col­lect­ing $52.5 mil­lion up­front from Red­Hill Bio­phar­ma for par­tial rights to Movan­tik. The drug, which was orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped by Nek­tar Ther­a­peu­tics to treat opi­oid-in­duced con­sti­pa­tion, gen­er­at­ed US sales of $96 mil­lion last year (Dai­ichi Sankyo shares some of the prof­its). As­traZeneca will con­tin­ue to sup­ply the drug for a while.

→ Parisian biotech Sci­pio bio­science, which helps re­search and clin­i­cal labs with sin­gle-cell se­quenc­ing, has se­cured €6 mil­lion in Se­ries A fund­ing. The mon­ey will fu­el the fi­nal de­vel­op­ment of its sin­gle-cell RNA-se­quenc­ing kit, as well as mar­ket­ing and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment ef­forts to pre­pare for com­mer­cial launch in 2022.

Can a Chinese biotech deliver the first new lupus drug in decades? A high-profile group of VCs are betting on it.

Lilly Asia Ventures and Lake Bleu Capital are the co-headliners for RemeGen’s latest raise, which brought in more than $100 million. Hudson Bay Capital and Vivo Capital — which, like LAV, also invested in a pre-IPO round for Legend Biotech unveiled today — chimed in, as did Janchor Partners and OrbiMed.

Developing new drugs is incredibly hard. That’s why, despite superhuman efforts from the industry, we’re still looking at 12-18 months minimum before we can realistically hope for a vaccine for Covid-19, and probably months before there’s a proven viable drug treatment.

But our increasing ability to begin to industrialize the drug discovery and development process through an engineering approach means that we have more hope for speeding up this process than ever before — and not just to defeat coronavirus, but to benefit the development of all new medicines in the future.

Months after GSK’s Nucala cleared in a pivotal rare blood disorder study, the asthma biologic has scored in a late-stage trial in chronic rhinosinusitis patients with nasal polyps.

The British drugmaker on Friday disclosed data from the SYNAPSE study, which tested Nucala (also known as mepolizumab) against a placebo on top of standard-of-care in more than 400 patients, all of whom had a history of previous surgery (approximately one in three had ≥3 surgeries) and required surgery due to severe symptoms and bigger polyps.

→ Rip Ballou, who until very recently led vaccine research and development at GlaxoSmithKline, is joining the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) to lead its USAID-funded ADVANCE program. The program uses a network of researchers and institutions in Africa to help develop a vaccine for HIV. Ballou had worked at GSK since 2010 and has led global vaccine R&D since 2015. Prior to that he held posts at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a different post at GSK, Medimmune, and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.  IAVI is led by Mark Feinberg, the former CSO of Merck Vaccines.