An­oth­er phar­ma com­pa­ny is in­tend­ing to use a SPAC to join the Nas­daq.

4D phar­ma, a UK-based biotech, is re­verse-merg­ing with a blank check com­pa­ny in a deal worth up to $37.6 mil­lion. The move will give 4D phar­ma a new Nas­daq tick­er, which will be $LBPS, us­ing the Amer­i­can De­posi­tary Share pro­gram. 4D will con­tin­ue to trade on the Lon­don stock ex­change un­der its pre­vi­ous tick­er.

As a re­sult of the move, 4D phar­ma will gain $14.6 mil­lion in cash held by the blank check com­pa­ny, dubbed Longevi­ty $LOAC. The merg­er is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in ear­ly 2021, af­ter which shares will be im­me­di­ate­ly trade­able on Nas­daq.

4D’s Lon­don stock is ex­pect­ed to open at about $1.44 per share, rep­re­sent­ing about an 18% pre­mi­um on Wednes­day’s clos­ing price.

The com­pa­ny’s re­search fo­cus­es on har­ness­ing bac­te­ria from the hu­man gut to treat a wide range of dis­eases. Its lead pro­gram is cur­rent­ly in a Phase I/II study in com­bi­na­tion with Keytru­da ex­am­in­ing how it could af­fect sol­id tu­mors. 4D phar­ma al­so has clin­i­cal pro­grams in pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, asth­ma, Covid-19 and ir­ri­ta­ble bow­el syn­drome.

In­dia’s Dr. Red­dy’s the tar­get of an ap­par­ent cy­ber­at­tack

An ap­par­ent cy­ber­at­tack forced In­di­an drug­mak­er Dr. Red­dy’s to shut down all of its glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

The at­tack oc­curred ear­ly Thurs­day morn­ing lo­cal time, ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ings. Dr. Red­dy’s in­formed the lo­cal stock ex­change that “in the wake of a de­tect­ed cy­ber-at­tack, we have iso­lat­ed all da­ta cen­ter ser­vices to take re­quired pre­ven­tive ac­tions.”

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear what kind of cy­ber­at­tack hit the com­pa­ny, be it ran­somware or some­thing else. CIO Mukesh Rathi said in the fil­ing that he ex­pects the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions to be back up and run­ning at full ca­pac­i­ty with­in 24 hours.

Thurs­day’s at­tack comes less than a week af­ter In­di­an reg­u­la­tors ap­proved a Phase II/III study of Rus­sia’s Covid-19 vac­cine to com­mence in the coun­try.

Haystack Sci­ences ac­quired by in­sitro, bol­ster­ing ma­chine learn­ing ca­pa­bilites

AI and ma­chine learn­ing have long been the­o­rized as one of the next steps in drug R&D evo­lu­tion, and Thurs­day saw a deal aim­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on that front.

The ma­chine learn­ing-dri­ven com­pa­ny in­sitro an­nounced that it is ac­quir­ing Haystack Sci­ences, a pri­vate com­pa­ny de­vel­op­ing its own ma­chine learn­ing plat­form to help en­able drug dis­cov­ery. Fi­nan­cial terms of the deal were not dis­closed.

Haystack’s ap­proach fo­cus­es on syn­the­siz­ing, breed­ing and an­a­lyz­ing di­verse chem­i­cal li­braries en­cod­ed by unique DNA se­quences called DNA-en­cod­ed li­braries, or DELs. The tech can al­so ex­e­cute rapid fol­low-up and pos­sess­es a pro­pri­etary se­mi-quan­ti­ta­tive screen­ing tech­nol­o­gy that gen­er­ates datasets with high­er res­o­lu­tion than con­ven­tion­al “pan­ning” ap­proach­es.

All that goes in­to in­sitro’s ap­proach of gen­er­at­ing pre­dic­tive mod­els that the com­pa­ny us­es to ac­cel­er­ate tar­get se­lec­tion and de­vel­op their ther­a­pies.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

The National Institutes of Health has again declined to use so-called “march-in” rights to lower the price of Astellas and Pfizer’s prostate cancer drug Xtandi despite being invented at UCLA with grants from the US Army and NIH.

“Given the remaining patent life and the lengthy administrative process involved for a march-in proceeding, NIH does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug,” NIH told prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs and Clare Love, in a letter shared with Endpoints News. The institutes’ analyses found Xtandi “to be widely available to the public,” an indication that there was not a pressing need for the US to act.