Nick Galakatos and the Blackstone team now have a record $4.6B to invest in biopharma, with a big focus on pushing companies over the top

Nick Galakatos, Blackstone global head of life sciences

July 10, 2020 06:28 AM EDTUpdated July 13, 03:36 AM

Nick Galakatos and the Blackstone team now have a record $4.6B to invest in biopharma, with a big focus on pushing companies over the top

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Nick Galakatos and his team at Blackstone Life Sciences have seen their biggest opportunities swell up in mostly established players who don’t have all the money they need to accomplish everything on the to-do list. And right now, with the industry booming, that’s a long list with some hefty needs.

The Blackstone team has neatly tied up the largest private fund ever raised in life sciences for making big dreams come true in biopharma. Late Thursday, Blackstone put out word that they had closed their highly anticipated fund with the projected $4.6 billion all in.

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Adaptive Design Methods Offer Rapid, Seamless Transition Between Study Phases in Rare Cancer Trials

Rupa Doshi

Executive Director, Oncology Program Strategy

Rare cancers account for 22 percent of cancer diagnoses worldwide, yet there is no universally accepted definition for a “rare” cancer. Moreover, with the evolution of genomics and associated changes in categorizing tumors, some common cancers are now characterized into groups of rare cancers, each with a unique implication for patient management and therapy.

Adaptive designs, which allow for prospectively planned modifications to study design based on accumulating data from subjects in the trial, can be used to optimize rare oncology trials (see Figure 1). Adaptive design studies may include multiple cohorts and multiple tumor types. In addition, numerous adaptation methods may be used in a single trial and may facilitate a more rapid, seamless transition between study phases.

Matt Gline (L) and Pete Salzmann

August 2, 2021 07:30 AM EDTUpdated 09:13 AM

Deals

UPDATED: Roivant bumps stake in Immunovant with a $200M deal. But with M&A off the table, shares crater

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Roivant has worked out a deal to pick up a chunk of stock in its majority-owned sub Immunovant $IMVT, but the stock buy falls far short of its much-discussed thoughts about buying out all of the 43% of shares it doesn’t already own.

Roivant, which recently inked a SPAC move to the market at a $7 billion-plus valuation, has forged a deal to boost its ownership in Immunovant by 6.3 points, ending with 63.8% of the biotech’s stock following a $200 million injection. That cash will bolster Immunovant’s cash reserves, giving it a $600 million war chest to fund a slate of late-stage studies for its big drug: the anti-FcRn antibody IMVT-1401.

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August 2, 2021 06:08 PM EDT

Deals

Sanofi preps a multibillion-dollar buyout of an mRNA pioneer after falling behind in the race for a Covid-19 jab — report

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

It looks like Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson is dead serious about his intention to vault directly into contention for the future of mRNA vaccines.

A year after paying Translate Bio a whopping $425 million in an upfront and equity payment to help guide the pharma giant to the promised land of mRNA vaccines for Covid-19, Sanofi is reportedly ready to close the deal with a buyout.

Translate’s stock $TBIO soared 78% after the market closed Monday. A spokesperson for Sanofi declined to comment on the report, telling Endpoints News that the company doesn’t comment on market rumors.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Director, Clinical Program Management

Pliant Therapeutics

South San Francisco, CA, USA

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Anthony Sun, Zentalis and Zentera CEO (Zentalis)

August 2, 2021 10:21 AM EDTUpdated 11:22 AM

Financing

China

With clinical trials lined up for Zentalis drugs, China's Zentera sets its sights on more dealmaking and an IPO

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

As Zentalis geared up for an AACR presentation of early data on its WEE1 inhibitor earlier this year, its Chinese joint venture Zentera wasn’t idle, either.

Zentera, which has headquarters in Shanghai, had already nabbed clearance to start clinical trials in China for three of the parent company’s drugs. In May — just a month after Zentalis touted three “exceptional responses” out of 55 patients for their shared lead drug, ZN-c3 — it got a fourth CTA approval.

Thomas Soloway, T-knife CEO

August 2, 2021 09:32 AM EDT

Financing

What happens when you give a mouse a human self-antigen? Investors bet $110M to find out

Nicole DeFeudis

Editor

T-knife Therapeutics launched last August on a mission to isolate T cell receptors not from human donors, but from mice. Now, with a new CEO and a candidate bound for the clinic, the Versant-backed company is reloading with a fresh $110 million.

“What we are trying to do for the field of TCR therapy and solid tumor therapy is very analogous to what the murine platforms have done in antibody development,” CEO Thomas Soloway told Endpoints News.

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Stéphane Bancel, AP Images

August 2, 2021 09:21 AM EDTUpdated 05:38 PM

Deals

Moderna takes on a low-risk pact with CAR-T player Autolus for mRNA-based cancer drugs

Kyle Blankenship

Managing Editor

Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine has transformed the once-backwater biotech into one of the most highly valued drugmakers in the world in the span of a year. But what does the future hold for Moderna’s star turn? A small-scale discovery pact could offer a clue.

Moderna will hold exclusive rights to four mRNA-based immuno-oncology candidates using proprietary binding tech from Autolus, a biotech best known for its work on “off-the-shelf” CAR-T therapies, the partners said Monday.

August 2, 2021 07:26 AM EDTUpdated 10:25 AM

FDA+

UPDATED: Watch out GlaxoSmithKline: AstraZeneca's once-failed lupus drug is now approved

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Capping a roller coaster journey, AstraZeneca has steered its lupus drug anifrolumab across the finish line.

Saphnelo, as the antibody will be marketed, is the only treatment that’s been approved for systemic lupus erythematosus since GlaxoSmithKline’s Benlysta clinched an OK in 2011. The British drugmaker notes it’s also the first to target the type I interferon receptor.

Mirroring the population that the drug was tested on in late-stage trials, regulators sanctioned it for patients with moderate to severe cases who are already receiving standard therapy — setting up a launch planned for the end of August, according to Ruud Dobber, who’s in charge of AstraZeneca’s biopharmaceuticals business unit.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Director-Regulatory

Icosavax, Inc.

Seattle, WA, USA

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August 2, 2021 07:18 AM EDT

Deals

Ipsen continues its shopping spree with a $1B-plus deal for Exicure's next-gen oligonucleotides

Nicole DeFeudis

Editor

Ipsen has been on a deal-making spree the last few weeks, shelling out more than a billion dollars in two separate deals to work on a mid-stage levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID) candidate and a preclinical BAX inhibitor in several cancers. But on Monday, the company inked its largest collaboration deal yet.

Ipsen is putting down $20 million upfront and up to $1 billion in biobucks for exclusive options to two of Exicure’s discovery-stage spherical nucleic acid (SNA) treatments for Huntington’s disease and Angelman syndrome.

July 31, 2021 06:00 AM EDT

Weekly

Not all mRNA vaccines are created equal. Does it matter?; Neuro is back; Private M&A affair; and more

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

As part of our broader and deeper drive, Endpoints has been pairing webinars with our special reports to cover more angles on a given topic. In conjunction with Max Gelman’s neuroscience feature, Kyle Blankenship moderated an insightful panel to discuss where the field is headed. You can register to watch it on demand here.

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