→ Ay­ala Ther­a­peu­tics — which fo­cus­es on rare can­cers that oc­cur due to dys­reg­u­la­tion of the Notch-ac­ti­vat­ing path­way — has raised $30 mil­lion in a round of fi­nanc­ing led by part­ner No­var­tis.

The funds, which al­so came from in­vestors in­clud­ing SBI JI In­no­va­tion Fund, Is­rael Biotech Fund, aMoon and Harel In­sur­ance & Fi­nance Group, will be used to fu­el the de­vel­op­ment of its lead drug, AL101. The pan-Notch in­hibitor is cur­rent­ly be­ing eval­u­at­ed for ade­noid cys­tic car­ci­no­ma (ACC) in a Phase II tri­al, and the com­pa­ny is al­so plan­ning to in­ves­ti­gate its use in a mid-stage study in triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer.

In 2017, Ay­ala inked a deal with Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb $BMY to de­vel­op treat­ments for can­cers with al­tered Notch genes. The fol­low­ing year, it joined forces with No­var­tis to de­vel­op and mar­ket an­oth­er drug, AL102, in com­bi­na­tion with BC­MA-tar­get­ing agents for mul­ti­ple myelo­ma pa­tients.

The Is­raeli biotech raised $17 mil­lion in its first round of fi­nanc­ing in April 2018.

→ The FDA grant­ed Bay­er’s Aliqopa (co­pan­lis­ib) — used for the treat­ment of adult pa­tients with re­lapsed mar­gin­al zone lym­phoma (MZL) who have re­ceived at least two oth­er ther­a­pies pri­or — break­through ther­a­py des­ig­na­tion based on over­all re­sponse rate (ORR) from its piv­otal Phase II CHRONOS-1 study. The com­pa­ny says that it “is con­duct­ing two ad­di­tion­al Phase III stud­ies to eval­u­ate the ef­fi­ca­cy and safe­ty of Aliqopa in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er ther­a­pies with iNHL (in­clud­ing MZL) who have re­lapsed fol­low­ing one or more pri­or ther­a­pies.”

→ Ger­man-based Bay­er $BAYRY and Foun­da­tion Med­i­cine $FMI are en­ter­ing a glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tion for the de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of NGS-based com­pan­ion di­ag­nos­tic tests, which help find a pos­si­ble can­cer treat­ment ther­a­py via mol­e­c­u­lar in­for­ma­tion from a pa­tient’s tu­mor genome. Bay­er will al­so have ac­cess to Foun­da­tionOne CDx — Foun­da­tion Med­i­cine’s se­quenc­ing based in vit­ro di­ag­nos­tic de­vice.

The first project that will be un­der­tak­en is de­vel­op­ing a com­pan­ion di­ag­nos­tic for Vi­t­rakvi (larotrec­tinib), the first and on­ly TRK in­hibitor ap­proved in the US for adult and pe­di­atric pa­tients with “sol­id tu­mors that have a neu­rotroph­ic tropomyosin re­cep­tor ki­nase (NTRK) gene fu­sion with­out a known ac­quired re­sis­tance mu­ta­tion that are ei­ther metasta­t­ic or where sur­gi­cal re­sec­tion will like­ly re­sult in se­vere mor­bid­i­ty, and have no sat­is­fac­to­ry al­ter­na­tive treat­ments or that have pro­gressed fol­low­ing treat­ment.”

→ As­traZeneca spin­out Viela Bio has notched a com­mer­cial deal with sea­soned Chi­nese phar­ma Han­soh cen­tered around inebi­lizum­ab, the lead drug among six as­sets from the phar­ma gi­ant. The an­ti-CD19 drug treats neu­romyelitis op­ti­ca spec­trum dis­or­der, a rare dis­ease that af­fects the eye and spine. All told, the deal is worth up to $220 mil­lion in­clud­ing up­front and mile­stones.

→ The Park­er In­sti­tute is em­bark­ing on a new re­search jour­ney to find out why some pa­tients de­vel­op au­toim­mune dis­or­ders fol­low­ing can­cer im­munother­a­py. To­geth­er with two oth­er non­prof­its (ded­i­cat­ed to di­a­betes and health­care re­spec­tive­ly), it’s pledg­ing $10 mil­lion over three years to sup­port re­searchers at Yale, UCSF, Vir­ginia Ma­son and Dana-Far­ber. The hope is to both ad­vance can­cer treat­ment and bet­ter un­der­stand how type 1 di­a­betes de­vel­ops in gen­er­al.

→ In 2015, In­ovio joined forces with As­traZeneca’s $AZN Med­Im­mune unit for $27.5 mil­lion up­front, as well as an­oth­er po­ten­tial $700 mil­lion in mile­stone pay­ments — for the ex­clu­sive rights to In­ovio’s im­munother­a­py, de­signed to tar­get can­cers caused by hu­man pa­pil­lo­mavirus (HPV), in ad­di­tion to two ad­di­tion­al DNA-based can­cer vac­cine prod­ucts. On Wednes­day, In­ovio in a fil­ing dis­closed that Med­Im­mune was re­tain­ing its rights to the HPV im­munother­a­py, ME­DI0457 (pre­vi­ous­ly called INO-3112), but walk­ing away from the rest.

A plant located in Wrexham, Wales that is packing the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine into vials was surrounded by a bomb squad after officials called police to report a suspicious package.

The alert caused a partial evacuation of the plant, the BBC was among those to report Wednesday. The owner of the plant, British drugmaker Wockhardt UK, said it was cooperating with local authorities and that there were no reports of any injuries.

Hours before President Biden’s Covid-19 team gave their first virtual press conference, the famed AIDS researcher David Ho delivered concerning news in a new pre-print: SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351, the variant that emerged in South Africa, is “markedly more resistant” to antibodies from convalescent plasma and vaccinated individuals.

The news for several monoclonal antibodies, including Eli Lilly’s bamlanivimab, was even worse: Their ability to neutralize was “completely or markedly abolished,” Ho wrote. Lilly’s antibody cocktail, which was just shown to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalizations or death, also became far less potent.

Psychedelics have made a comeback for mental health research, with companies like startup biotech ATAI Life Sciences raising millions and earning the backing of prominent investors like Peter Thiel, but there’s a hole at the heart of the resurgence: Researchers still don’t fully understand how they work.

A new partnership between ATAI and world-renowned Mass General Hospital hopes to change that.