Af­ter dig­ging through Re­gen­eron’s trash bin, Kiniksa has man­aged to put to­geth­er a tiny run with the ag­ing drug Ar­c­a­lyst in re­cent years. Now, the com­pa­ny will look to break through in Asian mar­kets.

Huadong Med­i­cine will pay $22 mil­lion up­front and a po­ten­tial $640 mil­lion in down­stream mile­stones to ex­clu­sive­ly li­cense Kiniksa’s Ar­c­a­lyst, an IL-1α and IL-1β block­er, and Covid-19 an­ti­body can­di­date mavril­i­mum­ab in Asian mar­kets not in­clud­ing Japan, the part­ners said Wednes­day.

Ar­c­a­lyst, an ag­ing drug Kiniksa picked up from Re­gen­eron’s junk heap back in 2017, has con­tin­ued earn­ing div­i­dends for the com­pa­ny in the past few years, most re­cent­ly earn­ing an ap­proval in March 2021 to treat re­cur­rent peri­cardi­tis and re­duce the risk of re­cur­rence in pa­tients 12 years and old­er.

Ar­c­a­lyst was first ap­proved in 2008 for cry­opy­rin-as­so­ci­at­ed pe­ri­od­ic syn­dromes (CAPS), in­clud­ing fa­mil­ial cold au­toin­flam­ma­to­ry syn­drome and Muck­le-Wells syn­drome. It got an­oth­er OK in De­cem­ber 2020 for the main­te­nance of re­mis­sion of de­fi­cien­cy of IL-1 re­cep­tor an­tag­o­nist (DI­RA). Kiniksa con­trols full sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the drug for all three in­di­ca­tions in the US.

Now, the com­pa­ny is lean­ing on a lo­cal part­ner to help dis­trib­ute across the re­gion, which in­cludes mar­kets in Chi­na, Hong Kong, Tai­wan, South Ko­rea, Aus­tralia, and 18 oth­er coun­tries, Kiniksa said. That’s a com­mon strat­e­gy for West­ern drug­mak­ers look­ing to break in giv­en the unique mar­ket dy­nam­ics in Chi­na in par­tic­u­lar.

Mean­while, the pact al­so in­cludes the lit­tle-her­ald­ed mavril­i­mum­ab, one of many an­ti­body hope­fuls look­ing to make a dent in the late stage of the pan­dem­ic.

Back in De­cem­ber 2020, the com­pa­ny re­vealed mid­dling da­ta for that drug, once a can­di­date in rheuma­toid arthri­tis, in pre­vent­ing se­vere Covid-19 pa­tient deaths over place­bo. But Kiniksa has plowed ahead re­gard­less af­ter cast­ing a hope­ful light that the da­ta were mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, the wan­ing pan­dem­ic and a lack of pa­tient in­ter­est could smoth­er the drug’s chances even if an un­like­ly ap­proval comes down. That’s a tes­ta­ment to the suc­cess of the Covid-19 vac­cines and the emer­gency ap­provals of mul­ti­ple oral an­tivi­rals.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.

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.