When Kin­nate Bio­phar­ma teamed up with Or­biMed and Fore­site to launch a joint ven­ture to bring its ki­nase in­hibitors to the Chi­nese mar­ket in 2021, the biotech high­light­ed how Or­biMed Asia Part­ners, which led the $35 mil­lion Se­ries A, brought “tremen­dous ex­per­tise and con­nec­tions in Chi­na.”

Less than two years lat­er, the in­vestors are get­ting out of the pic­ture.

Kin­nate is buy­ing back Or­biMed and Fore­site’s own­er­ship stakes in the Shang­hai-based joint ven­ture, which it’s since named Kin­njiu Bio­phar­ma. In to­tal, it’s pay­ing the firms $24 mil­lion — a mix of cash and Kin­nate stock. Both firms re­main on Kin­nate’s board of di­rec­tors.

Af­ter the pub­li­ca­tion of this sto­ry, a Kin­nate spokesper­son told End­points News that the com­pa­ny will now in­te­grate plans in the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, Hong Kong, Macau and Tai­wan in­to its glob­al de­vel­op­ment pro­gram for its pipeline.

“The biotech mar­ket dy­nam­ics in Chi­na have changed, and with this trans­ac­tion we see greater val­ue in re­gain­ing con­trol of both as­sets and cash,” the spokesper­son wrote.

At the time of Kin­njiu’s launch, Kin­nate not­ed it would be a ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er. The spokesper­son did not an­swer a ques­tion on how big of a stake Or­biMed and Fore­site pre­vi­ous­ly owned. Fol­low­ing the deal, Kin­nate will keep Kin­njiu’s cash, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, key per­son­nel and the le­gal en­ti­ty struc­ture.

“We be­lieve re­tain­ing the Kin­njiu struc­ture will en­able Kin­nate to con­tin­ue to in­vest in in­no­va­tion and clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of its ki­nase in­hibitors in the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, Hong Kong, Macau and Tai­wan,” CEO Ni­ma Farzan said in a state­ment.

Farzan pre­vi­ous­ly told End­points that Kin­nate de­cid­ed to set up a whole new com­pa­ny in or­der to close­ly fo­cus on the unique as­pects of the Chi­nese mar­ket, where rates of cer­tain types of can­cer are dif­fer­ent from oth­er places. Kin­nate is fo­cused on new gen­er­a­tions of ki­nase in­hibitors that tar­get ge­net­i­cal­ly de­fined sub­sets of pa­tients, es­pe­cial­ly those who may have nat­ur­al or ac­quired re­sis­tance against cur­rent ther­a­pies.

Since then, Kin­nate has put its lead drug, a RAF in­hibitor dubbed exarafenib, in­to a Phase I tri­al.

In the re­lease, the biotech added that it’s al­so opened ad­di­tion­al sites for the Phase I tri­al in main­land Chi­na and Tai­wan, with plans to start a sep­a­rate Phase I for KIN-3248, a pan-FGFR in­hibitor, in Tai­wan.

Ed­i­tor’s note: Sto­ry up­dat­ed with com­ment from Kin­nate.

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.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

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.

Liverpool may be known for rock and roll and premier league football, but the China-based contract manufacturer Pharmaron is looking to make it a bigger hub for cell and gene therapy manufacturing.

As part of Pharmaron’s further commitment to Merseyside county, it plans to build an 8,000-square-meter facility, or around 86,000 square feet, which includes a boost to the manufacturing capacity of 3,500 square meters, or 37,600 square feet. The price tag for the expansion will be £151 million ($186 million), with Pharmaron receiving a grant from the UK Government’s Life Sciences Innovation Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF).