Amarin’s fish oil em­pire may be slip­ping out of its grasp.

On Wednes­day, in the lat­est twist in a long le­gal bat­tle, the ap­peal pan­el of judges was an­nounced for the patent dis­pute be­tween Amarin with two gener­ic drug­mak­ers that are look­ing to make off-brand de­ci­sion. No rul­ing has yet been made — the hear­ing starts at 10:30 this morn­ing — but an­a­lysts be­lieved that the de­ci­sion could come down to which judges were cho­sen, and that these judges may be un­like­ly to de­cide in Amarin’s fa­vor. The stock fell 17% pre-mar­ket.

In a note, Stifel’s Derek Archi­la said the judges’ view on Amarin was mixed, but giv­en that a low per­cent­age of such dis­putes are re­versed on ap­peal, the se­lec­tion did not bode well. “Giv­en the low rates of suc­cess for a re­ver­sal in these types of cas­es (10-20%), we think this doesn’t im­prove the odds,” he wrote.

SVB Leerink’s Ami Fa­dia struck a sim­i­lar tone. “Bot­tom line: Over­all, we don’t be­lieve this 3-judge pan­el im­proves Amarin’s chances at win­ning the Vas­cepa patent lit­i­ga­tion ap­peal.” And Jef­feries’ Michael Yee may have been the bluntest: “Judge pan­el looks mixed at best,” he wrote.

Last De­cem­ber, the FDA opened a path for Amarin’s fish oil drug Vas­cepa to be­come a block­buster, ex­pand­ing its ap­proval to in­clude pre­ven­tion of heart at­tacks and stroke. But just four months lat­er a fed­er­al judge ruled that Amarin’s patents on the drug were in­valid, set­ting up Hik­ma Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Dr. Red­dy’s to mar­ket gener­ic al­ter­na­tives. Amarin ap­pealed, lead­ing to to­day’s hear­ing. — Ja­son Mast

San­thera wheels and deals its way to glob­al Duchenne rights

In a three-way deal, San­thera has picked up glob­al rights to the Duchenne drug it signed on­to two years ago.

The drug, known as va­morolone, is a steroid that is de­signed to have the same ef­fects as the cor­ti­cos­teroids Duchenne pa­tients now take to slow dis­ease progress but with­out the sys­tem­at­ic side ef­fects those steroids cause. Rever­a­Gen de­vel­oped the com­pounds and signed an op­tion agree­ment with Actel­lion in 2016. Two years lat­er, Actel­lion — now known as Idor­sia — sold the op­tion to San­thera.

So far, on­ly Phase IIa da­ta com­par­ing pa­tients on the drug to nat­ur­al his­to­ry com­para­tors have come out. San­thera’s op­tion al­lowed them to wait un­til Phase IIb da­ta emerged, but they chose to act ear­ly, giv­ing Idor­sia 366,667 shares and an ex­change­able note for 10 mil­lion CHF ($11 mil­lion) to re­struc­ture the deal. Rever­a­gen, in turn, will re­ceive $7 mil­lion — giv­en in month­ly in­stall­ments of $500,000 to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ment.

With San­thera trad­ing at $7.35, Idor­sia’s new shares are worth about $2.7 mil­lion.  — Ja­son Mast

Small Is­raeli pain biotech finds scant pur­chase for IPO

As the biotech boom surged in the US, the Is­raeli biotech PainRe­form sought to get in on the ac­tion and raise $25 mil­lion to ad­vance their top­i­cal post-op pain drug. The com­pa­ny, though, has strug­gled to find buy­ers. They of­fi­cial­ly filed to raise $23 mil­lion by sell­ing shares be­tween $8 and $10, but yes­ter­day an­nounced they priced on the low end, ul­ti­mate­ly net­ting $20 mil­lion.

That should still be enough, though, to cov­er the cost of clin­i­cal tri­als. In their F-1, the cit­ed $16 mil­lion as the es­ti­mat­ed cost of two piv­otal tri­als for their lead drug, ropi­va­caine. — Ja­son Mast

Clene NanoMed­i­cine SPACs its way to pub­lic mar­kets

Clene Nanomed­i­cine, a com­pa­ny re­search­ing the use of gold nanocrys­tals for neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, has an­nounced plans to go pub­lic. The com­pa­ny is go­ing the SPAC route, earn­ing a $542.5 mil­lion val­u­a­tion and net­ting a $25 mil­lion pay­ment from Tot­ten­ham Ac­qui­si­tion I Lim­it­ed in the process.

Wednes­day’s news comes on the heels of a $42.5 mil­lion Se­ries D round last week. Thus far, ALS has been Clene’s lead in­di­ca­tion, as the com­pa­ny was re­cent­ly se­lect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the first-ever plat­form tri­al for the dis­ease. Pit­ting its CNM-Au8 against two oth­er ALS can­di­dates and place­bo, the Phase III study be­gan en­rolling pa­tients last month. Clene has al­so seen signs that the same can­di­date could po­ten­tial­ly treat pa­tients with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis and Parkin­son’s dis­ease. It is run­ning con­cur­rent Phase II tri­als in those in­di­ca­tions, as well as ALS.  — Max Gel­man

Longtime Vertex CEO Jeffrey Leiden is taking on a new role.

Leiden has been appointed chairman of Tmunity’s board of directors, the company announced Monday. The move comes about a year and a half after Leiden announced he’d be stepping down from his position at Vertex.

Vertex saw immense growth under Leiden, leading the company from its exit out of hepatitis C, when cures were moving in, and into cystic fibrosis. The company’s cystic fibrosis triple combo therapy Trikafta is already its best-seller, reaching the distinction just six weeks after launch and recording the strongest first quarter of sales for any drug, per some estimates.

More than five years after Corey Fishman and Michael Dunne dusted sulopenem off Pfizer’s shelves — the second castoff antibiotic they’ve brought out of the pharma giant — and founded Iterum Therapeutics around that single drug, they have lined up a quick shot at approval with priority review from the FDA.

The decision, six months from now, will mark a make-or-break moment for a struggling biotech that has just enough cash to keep the lights on until the third quarter.

Immunocore spent much of 2019 dealing with the fallout of the Neil Woodford scandal, as the former star investor’s fall crashed the biotech’s valuation out of unicorn range. Now it turns out that the company spent 2020 dealing with another internal scandal.

The longtime UK biotech darling disclosed in their IPO filing last week that they had fallen victim to an alleged kickback scheme involving one of their employees. After a whistleblower came forward, they said in their F-1, they spent the summer and spring investigating, finding fraud on the part of an employee and two outside vendors.