Lon­don Stock Ex­change-list­ed PureTech Health an­nounced Wednes­day that it’s look­ing to ex­tend to Nas­daq. But due to its “strong cash po­si­tion,” the biotech says it isn’t is­su­ing any new shares in the po­ten­tial sec­ondary list­ing.

The com­pa­ny’s shares closed at £256.50 Tues­day on the Lon­don Stock Ex­change. Its can­di­date LYT-100 is cur­rent­ly in Phase I de­vel­op­ment for var­i­ous in­di­ca­tions, in­clud­ing lym­phat­ic flow dis­or­ders and fi­brot­ic and in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­or­ders. PureTech is ex­pect­ing a Phase Ib read­out in lym­phat­ic flow dis­or­ders lat­er this year, and is al­so plan­ning to launch a Phase II study for the drug to treat res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions ex­pe­ri­enced af­ter Covid-19.

In ad­di­tion to its own pipeline, PureTech ben­e­fits from a net­work of af­fil­i­ates, in­clud­ing Karuna Ther­a­peu­tics, which is work­ing on neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­or­der ther­a­pies, Gele­sis, which was FDA cleared for its weight man­age­ment drug Plen­i­ty, and Vedan­ta Bio­sciences, which is de­vel­op­ing mi­cro­bio­me drugs.

PureTech said it in­tends to con­tin­ue trad­ing on the Lon­don Stock Ex­change in ad­di­tion to its po­ten­tial US list­ing. — Nicole De­Feud­is 

Price watch­dog GoodRx rais­es $725 mil­lion, prices IPO

GoodRx, the con­sumer pre­scrip­tion drug plat­form and drug price watch­dog, an­nounced the pric­ing of its IPO Wednes­day morn­ing.

The com­pa­ny, which filed for the pub­lic of­fer­ing at the end of Au­gust, will be­gin trad­ing on the Nas­daq at $33 per share. Ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ing a $750 mil­lion raise, GoodRx came up just shy of that high tar­get and ul­ti­mate­ly pulled in $725 mil­lion.

GoodRx’s ini­tial price is the high­est among biotech IPOs this year — if you can call it a biotech.

So far in 2020, there have al­ready been more than 50 IPOs in the in­dus­try, eclips­ing the to­tal from all of 2019. As of mid-Au­gust, the com­pa­nies have raised a com­bined $11 bil­lion, but GoodRx’s hefty sum will sure­ly add to that to­tal.

GoodRx has be­come quite prof­itable in the last few years, de­spite be­ing main­ly known for com­pil­ing an­nu­al lists of the most ex­pen­sive drug prices and help­ing con­sumers com­pare pre­scrip­tion costs. In 2019 the com­pa­ny net­ted a prof­it of $66 mil­lion, and through the first of half of this year, they were on track to pock­et $100 mil­lion. — Max Gel­man

Ex­pand­ing a Cel­gene lega­cy pact, Bris­tol My­ers grabs celi­ac treat­ment from Anokion

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb is ap­par­ent­ly in­trigued enough by Anokion’s ap­proach for treat­ing au­toim­mune dis­ease to not just keep, but ex­pand the col­lab­o­ra­tion Cel­gene had inked with the Swiss biotech.

In the lat­est move, Bris­tol My­ers is grab­bing Anokion’s lead drug can­di­date, KAN-101, which is de­signed to treat celi­ac dis­ease by to­ler­iz­ing T cells to gluten anti­gens.

“We are in­trigued by the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lever­age this im­mune to­ler­iza­tion plat­form as a treat­ment for celi­ac dis­ease, as well as mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis,” Ru­pert Vessey, pres­i­dent of R&D, said in a state­ment.

Anokion is get­ting an undis­closed up­front pay­ment. As with the oth­er pro­grams cov­ered in deal, orig­i­nal­ly signed in 2016, the biotech is re­spon­si­ble for com­plet­ing pre­clin­cal and Phase I be­fore Bris­tol My­ers takes over the fund­ing of tri­als and sub­se­quent com­mer­cial work. — Am­ber Tong

Medi­gene chops staffers, switch­es fo­cus to TCR for sol­id tu­mors 

Ger­many’s Medi­gene is lay­ing off a quar­ter of its staff as it hun­kers down to fo­cus on the lead pro­grams in T cell re­cep­tor T cell ther­a­py.

The biotech, which boasts of al­liances with blue­bird and Vivek Ra­maswamy’s Cy­to­vant, not­ed that the chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with treat­ing very sick can­cer pa­tients amid a pan­dem­ic is forc­ing it to take longer with the Phase I dose es­ca­la­tion tri­al of MDG1011 in acute myeloid leukemia and myelodys­plas­tic syn­drome. But once that’s done, it will be look­ing for a part­ner for the Phase II por­tion.

Look­ing ahead, Medi­gene said it will con­cen­trate all pre­clin­i­cal R&D ac­tiv­i­ties on de­vel­op­ing cell ther­a­pies for sol­id tu­mors. — Am­ber Tong

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.