UPDATED: Jennifer Doudna spinout inks a Mammoth CRISPR deal with Vertex worth nearly $700M

Peter Nell, Mammoth Biosciences CBO

October 26, 2021 09:00 AM EDTUpdated 10:34 AM

UPDATED: Jennifer Doudna spinout inks a Mammoth CRISPR deal with Vertex worth nearly $700M

Nicole DeFeudis

Editor

When a company gets its start in gene editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna’s lab, it’s bound to make headlines. But three years in, the fanfare still hasn’t died down for Mammoth Biosciences. Now, the Brisbane, CA-based company is cheering on its first major R&D pact.

Mammoth unveiled a nearly $700 million deal with Vertex on Tuesday morning, good for the development of in vivo gene therapies for two mystery diseases. The stars of the show are Mammoth’s ultra-small CRISPR systems, including two Cas enzymes licensed from Doudna’s lab over the past couple years, Cas14 and Casɸ.

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December 7, 2021 07:00 AM ESTUpdated 03:54 PM

People

Special

Special report: Meet 20 extraordinary women who are supercharging biopharma R&D

Endpoints Staff

Even though many biopharma leaders have come together in recent years to address its gender gap, the consensus is clear: We still have a long way to go.

Companies this year were 2.5 times more likely than last year to have a diversity and inclusion program in place, according to a recent BIO survey, but women are still largely absent from executive roles. Getting women to enter the industry isn’t the problem — studies show that they represent just under half of all biotech employees around the world. But climbing through the ranks can be challenging, as women still report facing stereotypes, and, unfortunately, harassment.

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Optimizing Oral Drug Delivery using Zydis® Orally Disintegrating Tablet Technology to Address Patient Challenges

Catalent

KEY POINTS

Patients prefer oral dosing, but swallowing tablets can be a challenge for many patients.
The Zydis® orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) platform addresses challenges associated with oral dosing, expanding benefits for patients and options for healthcare providers.
A strong growth trajectory is expected for ODTs given therapeutic innovation and continued technology development.

Many patients prefer conventional tablets for the administration of medications, but some geriatric and pediatric patients and those with altered mental status and physical impairments find swallowing tablets to be difficult. Orally disintegrating tablets (ODTs), which dissolve completely without chewing or sucking, offer a patient-friendly dosage form for the administration of small-molecule drugs, peptides and proteins. With the potential for multiple sites of drug absorption, often faster onset action for the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), and potentially greater bioavailability, ODTs are an attractive option for drug developers considering first-to-market formulations or product line extensions of existing drugs with compatible API. In this report, we look at how innovation in the industry-leading Zydis ODT platform is expanding oral formulation options and bringing benefits to patients.

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Geoffrey Porges (SVB Leerink)

December 6, 2021 09:52 AM EST

Deals

Bioregnum

The 2022 wave coming? Top analyst says Big Pharma will have more than $1T available to satisfy its growing appetite for biotech M&A

All through this year you could practically feel the frustration of the biotech investor class as M&A activity continued to drag behind expectations — or desires. Buyouts of public companies provide the essential juice for keeping stocks lively, and there’s been a notable lack of juice in 2021.

So is all that about to change, big time?

SVB Leerink’s Geoffrey Porges, a longtime student of biotech M&A, thinks so. In a lengthy analysis he put out last week, Porges totted up the cash flow of the major pharmas and determined that there was a good long list of industry buyers who would have around a half trillion dollars of cash to play with in 2022. Leverage that up with added debt and you could get that deal cache to $1.6 trillion.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Lead Manager / Associate Director of Statistical Genetics

Deep Genomics

Boston, MA, USA

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James Sabry

December 7, 2021 07:55 AM ESTUpdated 09:46 AM

'We're in': Roche and Genentech join forces on a multibillion-dollar discovery pact with a brash AI upstart

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Over the past couple of years, the top execs at Roche and Genentech have inked a flurry of deals aligning the global pair with several of the new players that have emerged in the booming AI and machine learning world. That strategy was supercharged in the spring of 2020 by their decision to recruit Aviv Regev out of the computational world she occupied at the Broad. And today they’re taking that computational approach in R&D to a whole new level.

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Brett Monia, Ionis CEO

December 7, 2021 07:19 AM EST

Deals

AstraZeneca grabs PhIII ATTR drug from Ionis — infusing $200M cash into struggling partner

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

AstraZeneca is plucking another antisense drug out of Ionis’ prolific pipeline.

Paying $200 million in cash, AstraZeneca has inked a development and commercialization deal around eplontersen — the Phase III TTR amyloidosis drug formerly known as IONIS-TTR-LRX. On top of the upfront and $485 million worth of conditional payments to follow regulatory approvals, the pharma giant is promising $2.9 billion in sales-related milestones should the drug reach megablockbuster status, plus royalties.

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Chen Schor, Adicet CEO

December 6, 2021 07:04 AM ESTUpdated 11:32 AM

R&D

Cell/Gene Tx

Adicet unveils early responses for off-the-shelf drug leveraging rare T cells. Will durability hold up?

Kyle Blankenship

Managing Editor

On the hunt for the next generation of “off-the-shelf” cell therapies, biotech players like Adicet Bio have looked to leverage some of the less-obvious members of the immune system as potent cancer fighters. In Adicet’s case, scarce gamma delta T cells are on the menu, and an early cut of data is showing some promise.

Adicet’s AD-001, an off-the-shelf cell therapy developed by engineering a CD20-targeting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) onto a donor’s gamma delta T cells, posted two complete responses across four patients in an early Phase I study testing the drug in patients with heavily pretreated B cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the biotech said Monday.

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December 7, 2021 01:28 PM ESTUpdated 01:39 PM

Pharma

Marketing

MarketingRx Matchup: How AbbVie and Biohaven ads rank in head-to-head migraine challenge

Beth Snyder Bulik

Senior Editor

Are you ready to rumble? DTC brands that is. MarketingRx is launching a new monthly feature today called MarketingRx Matchup. We’re pitting two pharma brands’ DTC advertising in the same therapeutic category against each other to find out what consumers and patients really think.

Market research company Leger is handling the polling and analysis each month, and I’ll be writing up the results — along with my own take — inside MRx on the first Tuesday of the month.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Executive Director - Data Analysis - Science & Technology

Alexandria Real Estate Equities

Pasadena, CA

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Wendy Lund, Organon chief communications officer

December 7, 2021 01:14 PM EST

Pharma

Marketing

Q&A: Organon chief communications officer Wendy Lund talks about the Merck spinoff, women’s health and why it matters

Beth Snyder Bulik

Senior Editor

One of Wendy Lund’s earliest jobs was head of marketing at Planned Parenthood. As the youngest person on its management team, she introduced them to emerging new technologies, and in return, she learned the importance of fighting for what you believe in.

Now as chief communications officer at Organon, the women’s health company recently spun off by Merck, Lund is keeping that point top of mind. That’s in part because women’s health hasn’t been a spotlight therapy area for Big Pharma in years. Several companies have spun off, sold or at least considered selling women’s health assets to focus on “core” products.

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December 7, 2021 12:54 PM EST

Pharma

Marketing

MarketingRx roundup: Pfizer re-ups pneumonia ads as Merck threat looms; Real Chemistry founder CEO Jim Weiss steps back

Beth Snyder Bulik

Senior Editor

Every autumn, leaves fall from the trees and people start holiday shopping – and for the last few years Pfizer debuts a new “Know Pneumonia” awareness TV ad. This year the commercial, launched a week ago, features different people who talk about why they got vaccinated against pneumococcal pneumonia. Actors portray a young female firefighter with asthma, a mechanic with heart disease and an older woman with her grandchild. A Pfizer spokesperson declined comment on the latest iteration of the long-running campaign.

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