Raze Ther­a­peu­tics, the Cam­bridge start­up that launched in 2014 with $24 mil­lion in sup­port, is call­ing it quits.

The com­pa­ny was look­ing to ad­vance a new class of can­cer ther­a­peu­tics that tar­get key meta­bol­ic path­ways, but it ap­pears the sci­ence wasn’t quite ready for prime time.

Bruce Booth

Seed­ed in part by At­las Ven­ture, the com­pa­ny was fo­cused on can­cer an­a­bol­ic me­tab­o­lism, specif­i­cal­ly mi­to­chon­dr­i­al one-car­bon en­er­get­ics. The space has emerged re­cent­ly as a ma­jor dri­ver of can­cer pro­lif­er­a­tion, sur­vival, and bio­mass ac­cu­mu­la­tion. But ap­par­ent­ly the tech was too tough to con­tin­ue.

“Al­though it made in­trigu­ing progress, the un­der­ly­ing can­cer me­tab­o­lism bi­ol­o­gy was too com­pli­cat­ed to war­rant fur­ther in­vest­ment,” wrote Bruce Booth, part­ner at At­las, in a re­cent port­fo­lio up­date.

Such is life in biotech. Yet a new start­up has emerged in its place: Kyn Ther­a­peu­tics. Backed in part by At­las (and ex­plor­ing a sim­i­lar space), Kyn an­nounced a $49 mil­lion Se­ries A round this morn­ing. The com­pa­ny is led by a Raze’s for­mer CSO Mark Man­fre­di, an At­las en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence.

When asked what hap­pened at Raze, Man­fre­di said the com­pa­ny still had as­sets and col­lab­o­ra­tions, but no longer em­ployed any­one.

Pe­ter Bar­rett

The com­pa­ny was co-found­ed and led by At­las’ Pe­ter Bar­rett, and its sci­en­tif­ic founders in­clud­ed Vam­si Mootha (The Howard Hugh­es Med­ical In­sti­tute, Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal), Josh Ra­bi­nowitz (Prince­ton), and David Saba­ti­ni (White­head/MIT).

Ac­cord­ing to Booth, Raze’s sci­en­tif­ic as­sets went back in­to acad­e­mia for fur­ther ex­plo­ration.

An increase in demand of up to 79% for clinical trials in China has prompted Novotech the Asia-Pacific CRO to rapidly expand the China team, appointing expert local clinical executives to their Shanghai and Hong Kong offices. The company is planning to expand their team by 30% over the next quarter.

Novotech China has seen considerable demand recently which is borne out by research from GlobalData:
A global migration of clinical research is occurring from high-income countries to low and middle-income countries with emerging economies. Over the period 2017 to 2018, for example, the number of clinical trial sites opened by biotech companies in Asia-Pacific increased by 35% compared to 8% in the rest of the world, with growth as high as 79% in China.
Novotech CEO Dr John Moller said China offers the largest population in the world, rapid economic growth, and an increasing willingness by government to invest in research and development.
Novotech’s 23 years of experience working in the region means we are the ideal CRO partner for USA biotechs wanting to tap the research expertise and opportunities that China offers.
There are over 22,000 active investigators in Greater China, with about 5,000 investigators with experience on at least 3 studies (source GlobalData).

Servier is walking out on a partnership with MacroGenics $MGNX — for the second time.

After the market closed on Wednesday MacroGenics put out word that Servier is severing a deal — inked close to 7 years ago — to collaborate on the development of flotetuzumab and other Dual-Affinity Re-Targeting (DART) drugs in its pipeline.

MacroGenics CEO Scott Koenig shrugged off the departure of Servier, which paid $20 million to kick off the alliance and $20 million to option flotetuzumab — putting a heavily back-ended $1 billion-plus in additional biobuck money on the table for the anti-CD123/CD3 bispecific and its companion therapies.

Danish drugmaker Genmab A/S is off to the races with perhaps one of the biggest biotech public listings in decades, having reaped over $500 million on the Nasdaq, as it positions itself as a bonafide player in antibody-based cancer therapies.

The company, which has long served as J&J’s $JNJ key partner on the blockbuster multiple myeloma therapy Darzalex, has asserted it has been looking to launch its own proprietary product — one it owns at least half of — by 2025.

For drugmakers, FDA advisory panels are often an apprehended barometer of regulators’ final decisions. While the experts’ endorsement or criticism often translate directly to final outcomes, the FDA sometimes stun observers by diverging from recommendations.

A new paper out of Milbank Quarterly put a number on that trend by analyzing 376 voting meetings and subsequent actions from 2008 through 2015, confirming the general impression that regulators tend to agree with the adcomms most of the time — with discordances in only 22% of the cases.