→ When it came in­to the lime­light with a $35 mil­lion Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing in 2018, At­ten­ua promised to re­pur­pose three oral neu­ronal nico­tinic re­cep­tor as­sets dis­card­ed by Cat­a­lyst Bio­sciences (which in turn got the drugs through a merg­er with Tar­ga­cept). But now that it’s wrapped a proof-of-con­cept tri­al of the lead drug in chron­ic cough, At­ten­ua is flip­ping the port­fo­lio to an­oth­er buy­er for yet an­oth­er use.

CO­DA Bio­ther­a­peu­tics has bought At­ten­ua and its clin­i­cal stage small mol­e­cule can­di­dates, which they say will serve to con­trol their chemo­ge­net­ic re­cep­tors de­signed to treat neu­ro­path­ic pain, fo­cal epilep­sy and oth­er neu­ro­log­ic dis­or­ders.

The South San Fran­cis­co biotech liked that At­ten­ua’s drugs come with “high-qual­i­ty drug de­vel­op­ment work al­ready com­plet­ed, one with a cur­rent­ly ac­tive IND,” CEO Michael Narachi said.

Ac­cord­ing to clin­i­cal­tri­als.gov At­ten­ua com­plet­ed its chron­ic cough study in May last year, where it com­pared bradan­i­cline to place­bo, but has not post­ed the re­sults pub­licly. “We un­der­stand that the Phase II study end­points were not met,” Narachi told End­points News via email.

Omega Funds, Abing­worth, Or­biMed and Red­mile Group in­vest­ed in At­ten­ua. The fi­nan­cial terms of the buy­out deal were not dis­closed.

→ Ab­b­Vie’s oral JAK in­hibitor Rin­voq, which is part­ly ex­pect­ed to fill the gi­ant Hu­mi­ra hole af­ter the megablock­buster falls off its patent cliff, has more pos­i­tive da­ta back­ing its use. The com­pa­ny on Wednes­day is­sued da­ta from a piv­otal study in pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis pa­tients, months af­ter pub­lish­ing sim­i­lar­ly pos­i­tive re­sults from an­oth­er Phase III tri­al in the same pa­tient pop­u­la­tion. Rin­voq was ap­proved by the FDA in Au­gust for use in pa­tients with rheuma­toid arthri­tis, al­though the la­bel came with the dread­ed black box warn­ing that have plagued the class of drugs.

→  Co-founder Dan Browne may have stepped down in Oc­to­ber fol­low­ing a “mis­judg­ment in han­dling an em­ploy­ee mat­ter,” but Cal­i­for­nia-based Re­vance is go­ing full steam ahead with its Botox ri­val Dax­i­bot­u­linum­tox­i­nA for In­jec­tion (DAXI). The prod­uct has been ac­cept­ed for re­view by the FDA for use in frown lines, and the agency is ex­pect­ed to make its de­ci­sion by No­vem­ber 25. DAXI is po­si­tioned as a di­rect com­peti­tor to Al­ler­gan’s Botox fran­chise — a prod­uct that is ap­proved for 13 in­di­ca­tions and gen­er­at­ed close to $3.6 bil­lion in 2018, de­spite the emer­gence of ri­vals: Ipsen’s Dys­port (man­u­fac­tured by Gal­der­ma for cos­met­ic use), Merz Phar­ma’s Xeomin. An­oth­er com­peti­tor, Evo­lus, scored FDA ap­proval for its prod­uct, Jeu­veau, in Feb­ru­ary 2019.

→ Italy’s Chiesi, which has al­lied with Is­raeli biotech Pro­tal­ix to de­vel­op an en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­py for Fab­ry dis­ease, is now carv­ing out a whole new di­vi­sion to fo­cus on rare and ul­tra-rare dis­eases. It will be head­quar­tered in Boston and con­duct R&D in lyso­so­mal stor­age dis­or­ders, as well as rare hema­tol­ogy and oph­thal­mol­o­gy dis­eases.

→ Tiny Tonix, whose ex­per­i­men­tal PTSD drug Ton­mya lost its break­through ther­a­py sta­tus, ceased en­roll­ment of a piv­otal study on Wednes­day af­ter an in­de­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing pan­el rec­om­mend­ed stop­ping the tri­al due to fu­til­i­ty on the ba­sis that the drug like­ly does not work. Be­set with mul­ti­ple set­backs, Tonix has done every­thing in its pow­er to get Ton­mya across the fin­ish line, in­clud­ing chang­ing tri­al goal­posts and us­ing sub­set analy­ses to take the pro­gram for­ward. The drug will con­tin­ue to be test­ed in pa­tients with fi­bromyal­gia.

→ The Chi­nese tech gi­ant Ten­cent man­aged to riv­et at­ten­tion its way when the com­pa­ny tem­porar­i­ly post­ed an up­date on the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic that list­ed close to 25,000 deaths and more than 154,000 cas­es in Chi­na. The of­fi­cial num­ber of deaths is a bit more than 500. The con­glom­er­ate quick­ly re­vert­ed to the of­fi­cial num­bers once the re­port had been flagged by alarmed ob­servers.

Tai­wan News re­port­ed that the com­pa­ny may have in­ad­ver­tent­ly re­vealed the ac­tu­al fig­ures be­ing tracked, as op­posed to the num­bers Chi­na prefers. Ei­ther way, the re­port un­der­scores some lin­ger­ing doubts that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is not be­ing com­plete­ly up­front about the way it’s han­dled the brew­ing pan­dem­ic so far. The gov­ern­ment has about 60 mil­lion cit­i­zens un­der lock­down to try and help con­tain the spread of the Wuhan virus, which has se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ed the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

→ Fol­low­ing up on some promis­ing mid-stage da­ta out of ES­MO, Curis has con­vinced its part­ners at Au­ri­gene to fund and con­duct a Phase IIb/III study of CA-170 among pa­tients with non-squa­mous non-small cell lung can­cer (nsNSCLC). In ex­change Au­ri­gene, a sub­sidiary of In­dia’s Dr. Red­dy’s Labs, gets the rights to de­vel­op and com­mer­cial­ize the drug in all of Asia — adding to an ex­ist­ing agree­ment for In­dia and Rus­sia. De­signed to be used in com­bi­na­tion with chemora­di­a­tion, CA-170 is an oral drug that in­hibits both PD-L1 and VISTA.

→ Zai Lab is paying out a $25 million upfront for the rights to sell Turning Point Therapeutics’ lead drug repotrectinib in Greater China. The San Diego-based biotech is also in line for up to $151 million in milestones, along with mid-to-high teen royalties. Zai plans to add sites to the Phase II trial of the drug, which is designed to treat ROS1-positive advanced NSCLC in patients who were not previously treated with a TKI.

The Phase III might be delayed from its original early July goal, but Moderna says it will still kick off the pivotal study for what could ultimately be the first Covid-19 vaccine before the end of the month.

A day after Reuters reported that squabbling between the Cambridge biotech and government regulators had held up the trial by about two weeks, Moderna released a statement saying that they had completed enrollment of their 650-person Phase II trial and were on track to begin Phase III by the end of the month. The protocol for that study, which is meant to prove whether or not the vaccine can prevent people from becoming sick, has been finalized, they said.

→ Switzerland’s Numab Therapeutics has added Boehringer Ingelheim to its roster of collaborators. And they will start with two projects aiming at developing new drugs for difficult-to-treat lung and gastrointestinal cancers and patients with geographic atrophy. “Numab’s technology platform fits well with our internal antibody discovery and engineering capabilities and will enhance our efforts to deliver transformative antibody-based therapeutics to patients,” said Paige Mahaney, an SVP at Boehringer Ingelheim.