Is bio­phar­ma’s Mi­das man Vivek Ra­maswamy build­ing a new IPO ve­hi­cle with Der­ma­vant deal?

One of Vivek Ra­maswamy’s fledg­ling, pre-IPO “vant” com­pa­nies has swung an­oth­er in-li­cens­ing deal to beef up its pipeline.

Der­ma­vant Sci­ences, a sub­sidiary of Roivant, turned to a strug­gling Por­to­la $PT­LA to bag the top­i­cal rights to a Syk/JAK in­hibitor dubbed cer­du­la­tinib, which is cur­rent­ly in a Phase IIa tri­al for treat­ment-re­sis­tant cas­es of B-cell ma­lig­nan­cies.

Der­ma­vant is tak­ing the ther­a­py in a dif­fer­ent, dis­tinct­ly non-can­cer di­rec­tion, us­ing it to tamp down on in­flam­ma­to­ry skin con­di­tions. Der­ma­vant is al­ready at work on atopic der­mati­tis, ad­vanc­ing a PDE4 in­hibitor Roivant in-li­censed from Ei­sai last No­vem­ber.

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