BioX­cel is fil­ing for its one-year-old can­cer sub­sidiary to go pub­lic af­ter pre­vi­ous­ly say­ing that it was “ex­plor­ing strate­gic op­tions” for the com­pa­ny in its fourth quar­ter re­port.

On Tues­day, BioX­cel an­nounced that its can­cer arm, OnkosX­cel, filed to be­come a pub­lic com­pa­ny, though its tick­er sym­bol, num­ber of shares and price range for the ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing were not yet set.

Mizuho an­a­lyst Graig Su­van­nave­jh wrote in a note to in­vestors that the com­pa­ny’s “de­ci­sion to IPO comes, to us, as a sur­prise.”

He added that he be­lieved part­ner­ing with a phar­ma com­pa­ny to de­vel­op its lead can­di­date was “per­haps the more straight­for­ward path.”

BioX­cel formed OnkosX­cel in April last year, short­ly af­ter it won ap­proval for Igal­mi, an oral film drug placed un­der the tongue to treat ag­i­ta­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar I or II dis­or­der. While the par­ent com­pa­ny fo­cused on com­mer­cial­iz­ing its new­ly ap­proved drug and work­ing on its oth­er neu­ro and psych drug can­di­dates, OnkosX­cel fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing BX­CL701, an oral can­cer drug.

BX­CL701 is meant to ac­ti­vate the in­nate im­mune sys­tem to fight tu­mor cells, and OnkosX­cel is test­ing the drug in a type of prostate can­cer. It’s cur­rent­ly in a Phase IIa tri­al, where it’s be­ing test­ed in com­bi­na­tion with Keytru­da, and the com­pa­ny is plan­ning to move the can­di­date in­to a piv­otal Phase IIb tri­al in the sec­ond half of this year.

At AS­CO GU, the biotech pre­sent­ed in­ter­im da­ta on the Phase IIa tri­al, where 3 of 10 pa­tients in the dif­fi­cult-to-treat-pop­u­la­tion of metasta­t­ic prostate can­cer re­spond­ed to the com­bi­na­tion — re­sults, which Su­van­nave­jh said, were promis­ing.

OnkosX­cel is al­so plan­ning a tri­al in small cell lung can­cer for the sec­ond half of this year.

The EMA released updated recommendations today for the use of JAK inhibitors (JAKi) after reviewing data from several clinical trials that showed increased incidents of issues in certain patients who have rheumatoid arthritis and other risk factors.

The EMA noted malignancy, major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), serious infections, venous thromboembolism (VTE) and mortality in some patients.

A Massachusetts federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a class action lawsuit filed by investors against Biogen and several of its current and former executives over the company’s failed Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm (aducanumab).

The investors argued that Biogen’s contact with the FDA was unlawful and that the company made 25 false and misleading statements, including statements about the rollout and price of the drug.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

Dallas-based biotech Nanoscope Therapeutics unveiled Phase II results on its gene therapy for a rare eye disease Thursday morning.

In the RESTORE trial, 18 patients with retinitis pigmentosa got a gene therapy called MCO-010 while nine got placebo. On a vision test called the MLYMT, the treatment group had a one-point greater change over one year in their score compared to the placebo group, the primary endpoint of the study. However, the 95% confidence interval was 0.0 to 3.0, meaning the result was not statistically significant. The p-value was not provided.

Belgian biotech Confo Therapeutics has landed $183 million, plus potential royalties, in a drug-discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo.

Early Thursday, Confo Therapeutics put out word of the deal that will be focused on small molecule antagonists to go after an undisclosed target that the company says is associated with CNS diseases.

Confo CEO Cedric Ververken told Endpoints News that Daiichi originally reached out to learn about the biotech’s technology. He added that Confo, founded in 2015, will use its platform to drug a GPCR target that Daiichi has struggled with internally.