Jasper Ther­a­peu­tics, broad­ly aimed at mak­ing cell ther­a­py safer, re­leased pre­lim­i­nary da­ta for its com­ple­ment to stem cell trans­plants on Mon­day.

The biotech is run­ning an open-la­bel Phase I tri­al of its lead pro­gram JSP191, an an­ti-CD117 mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body that tar­gets the stem cell fac­tor re­cep­tor, as a con­di­tion­ing agent in pa­tients aged 65 to 74 with myelodys­plas­tic syn­dromes or acute myeloid leukemia that are un­der­go­ing blood cell trans­plan­ta­tion. Six pa­tients have re­ceived the treat­ment thus far, and all six showed suc­cess­ful en­graft­ment.

Re­searchers al­so saw donor myeloid chimerism of at least 95% in five of six evalu­able pa­tients at 28 days. Three of the five al­so showed that resid­ual dis­ease could not be found, in­di­cat­ing a “com­plete erad­i­ca­tion,” Jasper said.

Jasper’s the­o­ry be­hind JSP191 is that it blocks the stem cell fac­tor from bind­ing to CD117 and dis­rupts sur­vival sig­nals, caus­ing the stem cells to die off. That cre­ates an “emp­ty space” of sorts in the bone mar­row, al­low­ing for donor or gene-cor­rect­ed trans­plant­ed stem cells to en­graft.

The com­pa­ny launched out of Stan­ford, emerg­ing from stealth in late 2019 with a $35 mil­lion Se­ries A round.

Eu­rope ap­proves Ruko­bia for drug-re­sis­tant HIV

GSK’s Vi­iV saw the FDA ap­prove its twice-dai­ly pill for HIV back in Ju­ly, but now they’ve re­ceived the green light on an­oth­er con­ti­nent.

The Eu­ro­pean Union on Mon­day grant­ed Ruko­bia the thumbs up for use in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er an­ti­retro­vi­ral ther­a­pies in adults with drug-re­sis­tant HIV, about two months af­ter the CHMP not­ed its pos­i­tive opin­ion. In the ran­dom­ized co­hort of the drug’s piv­otal tri­al, 60% of the 272 pa­tients who re­ceived Ruko­bia in ad­di­tion to op­ti­mized back­ground ther­a­py saw un­de­tectable HIV vi­ral load af­ter 96 weeks.

“There still re­mains a small sub­set of peo­ple liv­ing with mul­ti-drug re­sis­tant HIV who are at risk of hav­ing their dis­ease progress,” Vi­iV CEO Deb­o­rah Wa­ter­house said in a state­ment. “We aim to meet the di­verse needs of the HIV com­mu­ni­ty.”

Ruko­bia func­tions by tar­get­ing the first step of the HIV life cy­cle and shows no cross-re­sis­tance to oth­er cur­rent­ly li­censed an­ti­retro­vi­ral class­es, Vi­iV says. That can help HIV pa­tients who have strug­gled to sup­press their vi­ral lev­els us­ing oth­er treat­ments.

Vi­iV al­so notched an ap­proval in the US for Cabe­nu­va last month, be­com­ing the first FDA-ap­proved in­jectable for HIV. The ther­a­py will look to re­place the dai­ly oral pills that are cur­rent­ly stan­dard of care in treat­ing HIV-pos­i­tive adults.

Jazz CEO Bruce Cozadd didn’t beat around the bush.

In his first video meeting with GW Pharma chief Justin Gover last July 8, he offered to pay $172 a share to get the company, which had beaten the odds in getting its remarkable cannabinoid drug Epidiolex across the regulatory finish line for epilepsy. GW’s stock closed at $129 that day.

Cozadd had already done his homework on the financing to make sure he could swing it the way he wanted. He just needed to do some due diligence before making the non-binding bid firm.

TRC Capital, which has selected various biotechs like Vertex and Biogen for the “mini-tender” treatment, jumped back into the game last month with an offer to buy shares in Seagen for $151. The problem, says Seagen, is that price was 4.28% lower than what the stock was selling for at the time they made the offer on Feb. 20, giving TRC a shot at an instant windfall.

So why sell for less than what it’s worth? Seagen notes warnings from regulatory authorities that these offers essentially try to trick investors into believing that they’re being offered a premium for the stock.