John­son & John­son has inked a re­search deal with Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia to work on gene ther­a­py for Alzheimer’s. The part­ner­ship lever­ages the uni­ver­si­ty’s ade­no-as­so­ci­at­ed virus­es and J&J’s an­ti-Alzheimer’s an­ti­bod­ies in hopes to pen­e­trate the blood brain bar­ri­er.

The part­ner­ship in­volves the phar­ma gi­ant’s in­no­va­tion-fo­cused arm John­son & John­son In­no­va­tion and Janssen Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. J&J hopes to use the uni­ver­si­ty’s AAV vi­ral de­liv­ery to trig­ger the ex­pres­sion of ther­a­peu­tic an­ti­bod­ies to the brain – an ef­fort that would change the sta­tus quo. Cur­rent­ly, the blood brain bar­ri­er lim­its the use of an­ti­bod­ies to treat brain dis­eases.

Janssen will have ex­clu­sive glob­al rights to com­mer­cial­ize prod­ucts un­der this new agree­ment.

Paul Stof­fels, J&J

The new re­search deal was one of 15 new col­lab­o­ra­tions J&J an­nounced as part of their reg­u­lar op­er­a­tional up­dates. John­son & John­son In­no­va­tion is no stranger to deals like this, as it’s penned more than 350 such part­ner­ships since its in­cep­tion in 2012.

“By ad­vanc­ing trans­for­ma­tive health­care in­no­va­tions to­geth­er with en­tre­pre­neurs, aca­d­e­m­ic cen­ters and in­sti­tu­tions, we are one step clos­er to ad­dress­ing many press­ing glob­al health­care chal­lenges,” said Paul Stof­fels, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and CSO of John­son & John­son, in a state­ment.

Here’s a sum­ma­ry of oth­er no­table ther­a­peu­tic re­search deals an­nounced in­volv­ing var­i­ous J&J arms:

→ A mul­ti-year re­search col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bea­con Dis­cov­ery, a G-Pro­tein Cou­pled Re­cep­tor (GCPR) drug dis­cov­ery in­cu­ba­tor launched by Belviq-mak­er Are­na Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in 2016. The col­lab­o­ra­tion will be to dis­cov­er and de­vel­op next-gen­er­a­tion ther­a­peu­tics to treat obe­si­ty and oth­er meta­bol­ic dis­eases.

→ A col­lab­o­ra­tion with a Boston mi­cro­bio­me ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny Holo­bio­me Cor­po­ra­tion to treat dis­eases of the cen­tral and en­teric ner­vous sys­tems. The col­lab­o­ra­tion will ex­am­ine a con­sor­tium of bac­te­ria that could be used to cre­ate a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed pro­bi­ot­ic or over-the-counter of­fer­ing that ad­dress­es sleep­less­ness.

→ A col­lab­o­ra­tion with San Diego’s Der­mala to de­vel­op mi­cro­bio­me-de­rived treat­ments for skin con­di­tions. Der­mala’s tech­nol­o­gy har­ness­es the ben­e­fi­cial func­tion of good skin bac­te­ria to elim­i­nate the bad bac­te­ria and bal­ance the mi­cro­bio­me.

→ A col­lab­o­ra­tion with Monash Uni­ver­si­ty aimed at fur­ther ex­plor­ing the un­der­ly­ing trig­gers of pso­ri­a­sis to dis­cov­er and de­vel­op po­ten­tial new treat­ments that pre­vent fu­ture oc­cur­rences of the dis­ease.

→ A col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Tai­wan In­dus­tri­al Tech­nol­o­gy Re­search In­sti­tute to set up co-fund­ing agree­ments for projects in lung can­cer, chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease, di­a­betes, eye health and dig­i­tal health ini­tia­tives.

The next generation of cell therapies have focused in large part on the development of allogeneic — better known as “off-the-shelf — drugs that can cut manufacturing times and hopefully evade a patient’s immune system. One of the early players in that race has new data at #ASH21 that show deep responses but will also raise fresh concerns about these therapies’ durability.

Precision Biosciences’ PBCAR0191, a CD19-directed allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy, posted a complete response rate of 59% in 22 heavily pretreated patients with various forms of relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia, six of whom had previously received an autologous CAR-T before dosing, the biotech said.

Last fall, as their Covid-19 vaccine crossed the finish line, Moderna unveiled plans to take its newly proven mRNA platform and use it to effectively change how the world blocks humanity’s most persistent viral foes.

In addition to their pre-existing vaccine programs, executives announced new ones for flu, where vaccines have chronically underperformed, and HIV, which has eluded every inoculation effort over nearly 40 years. In flu, the other mRNA vaccine companies — BioNTech (with Pfizer), Translate Bio (under Sanofi), and CureVac (with GSK) — all had similar ambitions, hoping to make shots that were as high as 80% effective.

Back in January 2019, the late House Oversight Committee chair Elijah Cummings kicked off a nearly 3-year-long drug pricing investigation that culminated today in a major new report detailing how prices for vital drugs have risen substantially since their launch, while calling on the Senate to pass a bill that will allow Medicare to negotiate some prices.

The committee’s investigation focused on 12 of the most expensive drugs for Medicare, showing massive price spikes that have accumulated over the years and made some drugs, like insulin, entirely unaffordable for some, to the point where some diabetics have had to ration their life-saving insulin, and some have died.