Boehringer In­gel­heim is ex­pand­ing its ef­forts in pro­tein degra­da­tion, sign­ing a pact with the Aus­tri­an biotech Prox­y­gen to de­vel­op a tech­nol­o­gy known as “mol­e­c­u­lar glue de­graders.”

Sim­i­lar to the PRO­TACS that com­pa­nies have fo­cused on to date, mol­e­c­u­lar glue de­graders are de­signed to bridge pro­teins to the body’s own in­ter­nal dis­pos­al sys­tem, al­low­ing re­searchers to tar­get pro­teins that can’t be hit by tra­di­tion­al small mol­e­cules. The mul­ti­ple myelo­ma drugs Revlim­id and Po­m­a­lyst work in this man­ner. Found­ed in 2016, Prox­y­gen has worked to de­vel­op meth­ods of sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly find­ing new ones.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion will fo­cus on can­cer, an ear Boehringer has di­rect­ed much of its pro­tein degra­da­tion work to date. In 2016, the Ger­man com­pa­ny be­came one of the first Big Phar­mas to go in on the field, sign­ing a can­cer pact with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dundee.  — Ja­son Mast

FDA rolls out red car­pet for Scynex­is’ su­per bug an­tibi­ot­ic.

Scynex­is is get­ting a ready wel­come as it heads for its first an­ti-fun­gal ap­proval.

The New Jer­sey biotech an­nounced Mon­day that its ap­pli­ca­tion for ap­proval for the drug ibrex­a­fungerp for vagi­nal yeast in­fec­tions had been ac­cept­ed and giv­en pri­or­i­ty re­view by the agency. The drug suc­ceed­ed in a 376-per­son Phase III tri­al last year, clear­ing pa­tients of in­fec­tion bet­ter than in­fec­tion.

Vagi­nal yeast in­fec­tion has long been their lead in­di­ca­tions, but Scynex­is al­so be­came fa­mous last year for hav­ing one of the drugs in de­vel­op­ment for Can­di­da Au­ris, a fun­gal in­fec­tion that has cropped up around the world, alarm­ing health of­fi­cials. Stud­ies in that in­di­ca­tion are on­go­ing. — Ja­son Mast

4D is ready to throw down as the red-hot biotech IPO mar­ket rocks on

4D Mol­e­c­u­lar Ther­a­peu­tics is lin­ing up the lat­est IPO in the trendy gene ther­a­py field.

The AAV biotech is look­ing to raise $100 mil­lion-plus from the IPO, auc­tion­ing off close to 5 mil­lion shares at a range of $20 to $25 a share.

Those up­sized num­bers put 4D back in the hunt for the 9-fig­ure sum it had in mind when the ex­ecs first filed to go pub­lic in the fall of 2019.

There have been 82 biotech IPOs count­ed in the US this year, a record num­ber that brought in a chart-top­ping $15 bil­lion in pro­ceeds. And Nas­daq clear­ly isn’t ready to close the win­dow on 2020. — John Car­roll

Pfiz­er col­labs with AI play­er PostEra to de­vel­op new pre­clin­i­cal drug mod­els

Pfiz­er has a new part­ner in the nascent field of gen­er­a­tive chem­istry.

The big phar­ma is team­ing up with PostEra, a San Fran­cis­co com­pa­ny found­ed last year that fo­cus­es on the AI-in­flu­enced field and spe­cial­izes in min­ing large datasets. Fi­nan­cial terms of the deal were not dis­closed, but PostEra re­ceived an up­front pay­ment with po­ten­tial mile­stones avail­able down the road. PostEra not­ed that it will re­tain own­er­ship rights to all al­go­rithms de­vel­oped dur­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion.

PostEra has de­vel­oped a ma­chine learn­ing-based plat­form that it says de­signs mol­e­c­u­lar struc­tures with op­ti­mized po­ten­cy and drug-like prop­er­ties. Ul­ti­mate­ly, PostEra hopes that its mod­el can help ac­cel­er­ate the drug de­vel­op­ment process.

Mon­day’s col­lab­o­ra­tion will pair Pfiz­er’s vast reach and re­sources with PostEra’s tech­nol­o­gy, in an ef­fort to both ad­vance the field of gen­er­a­tive chem­istry and pro­duce scal­able mod­els for in-house, pre­clin­i­cal drug dis­cov­ery projects.

The com­pa­ny orig­i­nal­ly spawned out of aca­d­e­m­ic re­search from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. Ear­li­er this year, PostEra al­so launched Covid Moon­shot, a crowd­sourced ini­tia­tive to speed the de­vel­op­ment of an an­tivi­ral for Covid-19. — Max Gel­man

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”