Two months af­ter ink­ing a rel­a­tive­ly qui­et $47 mil­lion up­front deal with Chi­na’s Kelun Biotech, Mer­ck is back with an­oth­er deal, this time eye­ing an ADC for sol­id tu­mors.

The lat­est pact in­cludes $35 mil­lion up­front but is large­ly back­loaded with $901 mil­lion on the line, sim­i­lar to the first tie-up, which came in at $47 mil­lion to start and $1.3 bil­lion on the biobucks end.

Er­ic Ru­bin

As Mer­ck re­port­ed­ly cir­cles the wa­ters of Seagen, an ear­ly ADC leader and part­ner of the New Jer­sey Big Phar­ma, the com­pa­ny is deep­en­ing its pres­ence in the an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate field to di­ver­si­fy its on­col­o­gy pipeline, ac­cord­ing to SVP of on­col­o­gy ear­ly de­vel­op­ment, Er­ic Ru­bin, in a state­ment Tues­day morn­ing.

Mer­ck gets ex­clu­sive glob­al rights. The two com­pa­nies will part­ner on ear­ly clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and the phar­ma will take over if the ADC en­ters lat­er-stage tri­als.

At the be­gin­ning of the sum­mer, the com­pa­nies were re­vealed to be work­ing on a cer­tain “large mol­e­cule” can­cer drug can­di­date. Now, the duo re­vealed the as­set in that first pact is SKB-264, an ADC that tar­gets TROP2. The drug is in a Phase III study in metasta­t­ic triple-neg­a­tive breast can­cer and mid-stage tri­als for non-small cell lung can­cer and ad­vanced sol­id tu­mors. Mer­ck, fre­quent­ly in­clined to of­fer up Keytru­da in com­bo stud­ies, will test its block­buster drug with Kelun’s in ad­vanced sol­id tu­mors, the com­pa­nies said.

If both pacts come to full fruition, the biobucks and up­front pay­ments will ap­proach the size of Mer­ck’s ac­qui­si­tion of ADC de­vel­op­er Velos­Bio in au­tumn 2020, for $2.75 bil­lion.

Almost all of the drug industry’s biggest advertisers cut their spending on Twitter to zero or near-zero over the last two weeks amid worries about impersonation of their brands by pranksters and the future of the social media company.

Among 18 of the biggest pharmaceutical advertisers in the US market, 12 cut their Twitter ad spending to nothing for the week beginning Nov. 14, according to Pathmatics, which tracks data on prescription drug ad spending as well as general corporate advertising. The list of drugmakers cutting spending to zero includes Merck, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and others.

MIT scientists have developed a tool that they say can insert large gene sequences where they want in the genome.

In a paper published Thursday in Nature Biotechnology, MIT fellows Omar Abudayyeh, Jonathan Gootenberg and colleagues detail a technology they call PASTE, which they say can potentially be used to insert long strands of DNA and treat genetic diseases caused by many different mutations, such as cystic fibrosis and Leber congenital amaurosis, a rare eye disorder that causes blindness.

The FDA typically releases guidance to help generic drug manufacturers develop new copycats of small molecule drugs, oftentimes in preparation for a brand name product’s patents or exclusivity to expire.

This week, FDA released such bioequivalence guidance for any generic drugmakers looking to take on Sarepta’s Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) drug Exondys 51 (eteplirsen), even though the drug’s sponsor has yet to convert the accelerated approval to a full approval, showing clinical benefit.

Novavax is pulling out of its Covid-19 vaccine deal with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a global partnership tasked with ensuring vaccine access in lower-income countries, following an alleged contract violation.

The Maryland-based company claimed on Friday that Gavi failed to purchase at least 350 million doses of its protein-based vaccine Nuvaxovid by the end of the year, per an advanced purchase agreement. Gavi, the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) are co-leaders of COVAX, an effort to ensure that all participating countries, regardless of income levels, have access to vaccines.

As the Japanese conglomerate Fujifilm continues to invest heavily in its CDMO arm, one of its manufacturing divisions is teeing up a major investment.

Fujifilm Irvine Scientific announced on Tuesday that parent Fujifilm is making a $188 million investment to build a cell culture media manufacturing site in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. The new site will mark Fujifilm Irvine’s fifth manufacturing site globally and its second in the US.