→ Neu­rotrope be­came the lat­est ca­su­al­ty in the high-risk Alzheimer’s R&D field. The biotech re­port­ed that their Phase II study of Bryo­statin-1 failed to show any im­prove­ment over place­bo us­ing the Se­vere Im­pair­ment Bat­tery (SIB) to­tal score at week 13. In fact, the drug arm did a lit­tle worse than a sug­ar pill, with an av­er­age in­crease of 1.3 points for the drug and 2.1 points for place­bo. Their shares $NTRP cratered in the rout that fol­lowed, plung­ing 78%. It’s cur­rent­ly a pen­ny stock.

The Alzheimer’s R&D field hasn’t record­ed a suc­cess in chang­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of the dis­ease, with re­cent piv­otal fail­ures forc­ing all the play­ers to re­con­sid­er their strate­gies.

→ Platelet Bio­Gen­e­sis (PBG) — a com­pa­ny fo­cused on stem cell-de­rived, on-de­mand hu­man platelets and platelet-based ther­a­peu­tics — has raised more than $26 mil­lion in Se­ries A-1 fi­nanc­ing. In com­bi­na­tion to this round, as well as Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing and grants, the com­pa­ny’s to­tal fund­ing is brought to about $45 mil­lion. The fi­nanc­ing was co-led by Ziff Cap­i­tal Part­ners and Qim­ing Ven­ture Part­ners USA in ad­di­tion to ex­ist­ing in­ves­tures Nest.Bio Ven­tures and eCoast An­gels.

The com­pa­ny said that it “will use the funds from the Se­ries A-1 round to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of its donor-in­de­pen­dent platelet man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties and ad­vance its proof of con­cept work around platelet-based ther­a­peu­tics.” PBG plans to dou­ble its staff to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 em­ploy­ees in 2020.

→ Stu­art Levy, co-founder of Paratek Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, passed away last week.

“Stu­art was a dis­tin­guished physi­cian who was the fore­front of an­tibi­ot­ic de­vel­op­ment and a ded­i­cat­ed cham­pi­on for the pru­dent use of an­tibi­otics,” said Evan Loh, Paratek CEO. “More im­por­tant­ly, he was a dear friend and men­tor to so many and his pas­sion lives on in each of us as we work to con­tin­ue his mis­sion of com­bat­ing the dai­ly threat of life-threat­en­ing in­fec­tions. We will great­ly miss him.”

Levy co-found­ed Paratek more than 20 years ago along with Wal­ter Gilbert. He was in­stru­men­tal in the de­vel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny’s lead an­tibi­otics, Nuzyra and Seysara. Levy dis­cov­ered the ef­flux mech­a­nism for drug (tetra­cy­cline) re­sis­tance and was among the first sci­en­tists to doc­u­ment the trans­fer of re­sis­tant bac­te­ria from an­i­mals to farm­work­ers. His 1992 book, The An­tibi­ot­ic Para­dox: How Mir­a­cle Drugs Are De­stroy­ing the Mir­a­cle, has been cit­ed wide­ly and trans­lat­ed in­to four lan­guages.

The news comes a few weeks af­ter the com­pa­ny pub­lished pos­i­tive Phase III da­ta for Nuzyra for pa­tients with AB­SS­SI.

→ In the midst of a sur­prise in­ter partes re­view by the US Patent Tri­als Ap­peal Board (PT­AB) for Alex­ion’s Soliris, the com­pa­ny and Bridge­Bio’s sub­sidiary Ei­dos Ther­a­peu­tics have inked an agree­ment grant­i­ng Alex­ion an ex­clu­sive li­cense to de­vel­op and com­mer­cial­ize their oral­ly-ad­min­is­tered small mol­e­cule AG10 — de­signed to treat transthyretin amy­loi­do­sis (AT­TR) by bind­ing and sta­bi­liz­ing transthyretin (TTR) in the blood— in Japan.

“Ei­dos is cur­rent­ly eval­u­at­ing AG10 in a Phase III study in the US and Eu­rope for AT­TR car­diomy­opa­thy (AT­TR-CM) – a pro­gres­sive, fa­tal dis­ease caused by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of mis­fold­ed TTR amy­loid in the heart – and plans to be­gin a Phase III study in AT­TR polyneu­ropa­thy (AT­TR-PN) – a pro­gres­sive, fa­tal dis­ease caused by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of mis­fold­ed TTR amy­loid in the pe­riph­er­al ner­vous sys­tem.”

→ A few months af­ter Ac­celeron and its part­ner at Cel­gene se­cured pri­or­i­ty re­view for their red blood cell boost­ing drug, lus­pa­ter­cept — to man­age ane­mia re­sult­ing from myelodys­plas­tic syn­drome (MDS) as well as be­ta tha­lassemia — the com­pa­ny has an­nounced an­oth­er win. This time they’ve gained an or­phan drug des­ig­na­tion by the FDA for its in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al ther­a­py so­tater­cept for the treat­ment of pa­tients with pul­monary ar­te­r­i­al hy­per­ten­sion (PAH).

Webster, MA-based real estate developer Galaxy Life Sciences struck a roughly $50 million deal to build in a biomanufacturing park in Worcester, an up-and-coming biotech hotspot about an hour west of Boston.

Galaxy paid $1.9 million for a 6-acre plot, on which it intends to construct a $50 million building grossing 95,000 to 180,000 square feet. The space will be designed to accommodate research and development, or manufacturing, and could employ 125 to 150 workers, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Construction is expected to begin this spring and wrap up in about a year.

After 13 years on Nasdaq, Cellular Biomedicine Group is returning to private hands.

CEO Tony (Bizuo) Liu is a key advocate of the deal, leading a consortium of mostly Chinese investors including other top company execs, Yunfeng Capital and TF Capital — even as the company is getting more entrenched in the US with its CAR-T and other cell therapy work.

Shareholders are receiving $19.75 per share $CBMG, which translates to a premium of 31.4% over the 30 trading-day average price as of August 11. The stock, though, has dropped significantly since the consortium first put in its proposal in November. Compared to then, the acquisition price marks only a 11.8% increase.

After abruptly shutting down three hemophilia studies back in March due to serious safety issues, Novo Nordisk is getting things going again.

The Danish pharma gave the go-ahead to resume Phase III trials for its concizumab candidate, which are investigating subcutaneous prophylaxis treatment in hemophilia A and B patients regardless of inhibitor status. Novo Nordisk had halted the studies after three patients experienced non-fatal blood clots.

VBL Therapeutics announced that it is on track in a Phase III trial of its drug VB-111 (ofranergene obadenovec) to treat platinum-resistant ovarian cancer in combination with paclitaxel.

After conducting its second interim analysis, the independent Data Safety Monitoring Committee (DSMC) recommended that Israel-based VBL continue full steam ahead. The committee looked at unblinded overall survival rate, which is the primary endpoint of the study, dubbed OVAL. The first analysis evaluated CA-125 response.