Jazz Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is team­ing up with Im­muno­Gen on a slate of armed an­ti­bod­ies.

Jazz $JAZZ will pay $175 mil­lion — $75 mil­lion up­front and $100 mil­lion in re­search sup­port — to claim opt-in rights on a line­up of three an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates ei­ther just in the clin­ic or planned for hu­man stud­ies. At the top of the list is Im­muno­Gen’s $IMGN Phase I ADC IMGN779, a CD33-tar­get­ed ADC for the treat­ment of acute myeloid leukemia, and IMGN632, a CD123-tar­get­ed ADC for hema­to­log­i­cal ma­lig­nan­cies be­ing teed up for its first Phase I. An­oth­er pro­gram will be des­ig­nat­ed for the col­lab­o­ra­tion lat­er.

Mark Enyedy

It won’t be quick. Jazz’s R&D fund­ing stretch­es out over 7 years, and the com­pa­ny will be re­spon­si­ble for tak­ing over de­vel­op­ment on any drug it op­tions. Once an op­tion is in place, Im­muno­Gen will be in line for un­spec­i­fied mile­stones and a range of roy­al­ties. Im­muno­Gen will re­tain US co-com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights to one or two of the pro­grams, shar­ing in the costs of get­ting the drugs through to an ap­proval.

Im­muno­Gen is us­ing one of its nov­el in­dolino-ben­zo­di­azepine pay­loads in ‘779. These drugs work best by latch­ing on to can­cer cells and then bomb­ing them with a tox­ic ther­a­py, by­pass­ing healthy cells.

“This strate­gic part­ner­ship with Jazz sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­vances our goal of ac­cel­er­at­ing the de­vel­op­ment of our ear­ly-stage nov­el ADC as­sets. This deal joins us with a glob­al part­ner, pro­vides us with sub­stan­tial fund­ing to sup­port these pro­grams, and pre­serves the right to co-com­mer­cial­ize one of these as­sets,” said Mark Enyedy, pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Im­muno­Gen.

In a first, Merck has secured a full approval for Keytruda in a tumor agnostic setting — as a treatment for any unresectable or metastatic solid tumors that are classified as microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR).

The FDA granted Keytruda accelerated approval in this indication in 2017, and GSK’s Jemperli followed suit in 2021. But now it’s converted to a full approval for Keytruda. Before prescribing, doctors would have to make sure patients carry this biomarker, using an FDA-approved test.

When Vigil Neuroscience filed its IPO papers in late 2021, the biotech revealed that the FDA had just cleared its Phase I trial — but with a partial clinical hold that limited dosing to under a certain level.

More than a year later, the FDA has lifted the hold.

Vigil is now free to dose VGL101, an antibody targeting TREM2, at levels higher than 20 mg/kg in its ongoing and future clinical trials in patients with adult-onset leukoencephalopathy with axonal spheroids and pigmented glia (ALSP), an inherited condition that affects the brain and spinal cord.

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.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”