The French meta­bol­ic ex­perts at Pox­el have re­versed course on their planned so­lo de­vel­op­ment mis­sion in Japan, lin­ing up an Asian part­ner for their late-stage di­a­betes drug imeglim­in.

Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon Phar­ma stepped up with a $42 mil­lion up­front, with promis­es of $24 mil­lion more for de­vel­op­ment mile­stones and about $233 mil­lion for hit­ting a slate of sales goals. In ex­change they land mar­ket­ing and de­vel­op­ment rights — they’ll be pay­ing for the Phase III — in Chi­na, Japan and oth­er key Asian coun­tries.

Thomas Kuhn

Back in May, though, Pox­el CEO Thomas Kuhn told me the biotech was plan­ning to go at Phase III in Japan all by it­self, a rare feat in the di­a­betes world, where a few key gi­ants dom­i­nate the glob­al land­scape for a dis­ease that has claimed mil­lions of pa­tients.

In­vestors didn’t mind, though, send­ing Pox­el’s shares (EPA: $POX­EL) rock­et­ing up 43%.

The Mer­ck Serono spin­out had ini­tial­ly fig­ured that it could pull off a Phase III pro­gram in Japan with 1,000 pa­tients, far few­er than what would nor­mal­ly be ex­pect­ed. Pox­el is styling imeglim­in as a mi­to­chon­dr­i­al ther­a­py that could pro­tect be­ta cells, mak­ing it a good po­ten­tial add-on. Its shares rock­et­ed up 40% last May af­ter a Phase IIb tri­al in Japan reg­is­tered he­mo­glo­bin A1c re­duc­tions of 0.52%, 0.94% and 1.00% for the 500 mg, 1000 mg and 1500 mg dose twice-dai­ly.

“Giv­en imeglim­in’s unique pro­file and nov­el mech­a­nism of ac­tion, which we be­lieve is well-suit­ed for Asian pa­tients, it has the po­ten­tial to be a very im­por­tant new oral ther­a­py for the treat­ment of type 2 di­a­betes. With their very long and suc­cess­ful his­to­ry of com­mer­cial­iz­ing di­a­betes prod­ucts and as a leader in this re­gion with a ded­i­cat­ed fran­chise, Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon Phar­ma will be an ex­cel­lent part­ner for imeglim­in in Asia,” said Kuhn in a state­ment. “Our near-term fo­cus in Japan is to ini­ti­ate the Phase III pro­gram and to work close­ly with Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon Phar­ma to sup­port the Japan­ese New Drug Ap­pli­ca­tion sub­mis­sion.”

Zoom can only go so far. And I think at this stage, we’ve all tested the limits of staying in touch — virtually. So I’m particularly happy now that we’ve revved up the travel machine to point myself to London for the first time in several years.

Whatever events we have lined up, we’ve always built in plenty of opportunities for all of us to get together and talk. For London, live, I plan to be right out front, meeting with and chatting with the small crowd of biopharma people we are hosting on October 12 at Silicon Valley Bank’s London headquarters. And there’s a lengthy mixer at the end I’m most looking forward to, with several networking openings between sessions.

Takeda on Tuesday morning made an announcement that almost 3,000 people with the rare disease known as hypoparathyroidism were fearing.

Due to unresolved supply issues and manufacturing woes, Takeda said it will cut its losses and discontinue its hypoparathyroidism drug, known as Natpara (parathyroid hormone), halting all manufacturing of the drug by the end of 2024, but the entire inventory will be available until depleted or expired, a company spokesperson said via email.

When Kaile Zagger took the helm of UC Davis spinout Evolve Biosystems several months ago, the company billed itself as a probiotic maker.

However, she believes the company’s Evivo supplement designed to help infants develop a healthy gut microbiome is “so much more” — and that, she said, calls for a rebrand.

Evolve has, well, evolved into Infinant Health, the company announced on Monday. The new name is a mash-up of the words “infant” and “infinite,” representing the company’s goal of expanding beyond infant care. While its sole product, Evivo, is intended for newborns, Infinant is “quickly developing” an option for kids through the age of two.