Small-cap play­er Ak­ers Bio­sciences $AK­ER has en­gi­neered a re­verse merg­er with pri­vate com­pa­ny MyMD Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

The new com­bined biotech, which will re­tain the name MyMD, is ex­pect­ed to trade un­der the new tick­er $MYMD once the trans­ac­tion clos­es. MyMD will ob­tain an 80% stake in Ak­ers, and the deal comes with an $18 mil­lion pri­vate place­ment that val­ues the Ak­ers at $1.85 per share, a rough­ly 7.5% pre­mi­um above Wednes­day’s clos­ing price.

MyMD is aim­ing to fo­cus on its MYMD-1 pro­gram, a syn­thet­ic plant al­ka­loid be­ing de­vel­oped to treat au­toim­mune and age-re­lat­ed dis­eases, in­clud­ing ag­ing it­self. The com­pa­ny claims the ex­per­i­men­tal drug is the first oral small mol­e­cule reg­u­la­tor of tu­mor necro­sis fac­tor al­pha ca­pa­ble of cross­ing the blood-brain bar­ri­er.

Two Phase II tri­als for the pro­gram are ex­pect­ed to be­gin some­time in the first quar­ter of 2021, and MyMD seeks to con­tin­ue launch­ing oth­er Phase II stud­ies through­out the year.

MyMD is al­so work­ing on its SU­PERA-1R plat­form, which based on a syn­thet­ic de­riv­a­tive of CBD that seeks to tar­get key cannabi­noid re­cep­tors. The com­pa­ny hopes to ad­dress anx­i­ety, chron­ic pain and seizures and is ex­pect­ed to be­gin hu­man tri­als as a ther­a­py for epilep­sy, fol­lowed by chron­ic pain. — Max Gel­man

Sanger In­sti­tute spin­out gets a $50M Se­ries C

When a hand­ful of en­tre­pre­neurs and sci­en­tists de­cid­ed to spin a ge­nomics start­up out of the Well­come Trust Sanger In­sti­tute, they had a plat­form that ad­vanced pro­gram­mers could use and rough­ly no one else.

In the six years since, said Con­geni­ca CEO David Atkins, they’ve de­vel­oped soft­ware vir­tu­al­ly any spe­cial­ists can use to quick­ly di­ag­nose rare and ul­tra-rare dis­eases and drug de­vel­op­ers can use to spot con­nec­tions be­tween dif­fer­ent genes and dif­fer­ent symp­toms. And now, for the first time, they’ve got a sig­nif­i­cant amount of cash to ex­pand.

Con­geni­ca an­nounced Mon­day a $50 mil­lion Se­ries C led by Ten­cent and Le­gal Gen­er­al, more than dou­bling the amount they cash raised to date. They’ll use the mon­ey to ex­pand in­to di­ag­nos­tics for can­cer  — quick­ly find­ing genes for tar­get­ed ther­a­pies — and gen­er­al well­ness, while al­so con­tin­u­ing their of­fer on rare dis­ease. So far, they’ve reached clients in 18 dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

“When it came out of Sanger, it was a very ad­vanced re­search soft­ware pro­gram: the pro­gram­mers could run it but you couldn’t give it to a third par­ty,” Atkins told End­points News. “It’s come a long way.” —Ja­son Mast

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

In a first, Merck has secured a full approval for Keytruda in a tumor agnostic setting — as a treatment for any unresectable or metastatic solid tumors that are classified as microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR).

The FDA granted Keytruda accelerated approval in this indication in 2017, and GSK’s Jemperli followed suit in 2021. But now it’s converted to a full approval for Keytruda. Before prescribing, doctors would have to make sure patients carry this biomarker, using an FDA-approved test.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.