A few months af­ter its deal with Am­gen, San Diego-based biotech Plex­i­um has inked a deal with an­oth­er Big Phar­ma – this time, it’s Ab­b­Vie.

While Am­gen’s deal fo­cused on the can­cer space, Ab­b­Vie hopes to use Plex­i­um’s “ag­nos­tic” tar­get­ed pro­tein degra­da­tion (TPD) plat­form to screen for new ther­a­pies for neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases, Plex­i­um an­nounced to­day.

The deal in­cludes $35 mil­lion up­front and $530 mil­lion in down­stream mile­stones, along with fu­ture roy­al­ties for each of the five un­spec­i­fied tar­gets that Plex­i­um will be screen­ing for new ther­a­pies, Plex­i­um CEO Per­ci­val Bar­ret­to-Ko told End­points News.

TPD takes ad­van­tage of the body’s pre-ex­ist­ing pro­tein de­struc­tion sys­tem via “mol­e­c­u­lar glues” and mono­va­lent de­graders that help jump­start that de­struc­tion process, what Bar­ret­to-Ko says is “quite an el­e­gant ther­a­peu­tic ap­proach.” Plex­i­um’s high-through­put screen­ing plat­form, which Bar­ret­to-Ko em­pha­sizes doesn’t fo­cus on any sin­gle modal­i­ty, al­lows a “di­rect mea­sure of degra­da­tion,” he said.

With the Ab­b­Vie deal, Plex­i­um plans on putting that plat­form to work in neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases, fo­cus­ing on five tar­gets to be­gin with, though Bar­ret­to-Ko did not dis­close what those tar­gets were.

Start­ed in 2019, Plex­i­um is an emerg­ing play­er in the TPD space, which fea­tures many oth­er com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Kymera, Ly­cia, and C4 Ther­a­peu­tics.

Bar­ret­to-Ko notes that the Ab­b­Vie deal is “one of a tril­o­gy of events” for Plex­i­um, start­ing with their Am­gen deal as well as their $102 mil­lion fi­nanc­ing round from Soft­Bank just a few weeks af­ter.

“It’s no se­cret that the mar­ket has been very dif­fi­cult out there for a lot of dif­fer­ent biotech com­pa­nies,” Bar­ret­to-Ko said. How­ev­er, with their re­cent fi­nanc­ing and deals, “It not on­ly val­i­dates the plat­form and the pro­grams that we have … It al­lows us to head down and do the work we do best, and be thought­ful and in­tent­ful in terms of what po­ten­tial next steps we might con­sid­er.”

As Astellas continues its drive to build out its gene therapy portfolio and capabilities, a subsidiary of the Japanese pharma company has entered into a collaboration with a little-known Pittsburgh biotech.

Astellas-owned Mitobridge and Generian Pharmaceuticals announced on Wednesday that they will work together in a new deal for “undruggable” protein targets. Generian will net an undisclosed upfront payment and could get up to $180 million in milestones, should anything from its platform prove successful, as well as single-digit royalties on global net sales.

As the House-passed bill to cap the monthly price of insulin at $35 nationwide makes its way for a Senate vote soon, Sanofi announced Wednesday morning that beginning next month it will cut the monthly price of its insulins for uninsured Americans to $35, down from $99 previously.

The announcement from Sanofi, which allows the uninsured to buy one or multiple Sanofi insulins (Lantus, Insulin Glargine U-100, Toujeo, Admelog, and Apidra) at $35 for a 30-day supply effective July 1, follows House passage (232-193) of the monthly cap in March, with just 12 Republicans voting in favor of the measure.

Three months separated from a disappointing readout of its Covid-19 vaccine, Icosavax is back with what it calls positive topline data for a different VLP vaccine candidate — although investors aren’t impressed.

IVX-121, a vaccine candidate for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), appeared to generate “robust” immune responses among both young and older adults, as measured by neutralizing antibodies, and appeared generally well-tolerated, Icosavax reported.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.