→ Dana-Far­ber is lend­ing a hand to lit­tle On­coSec’s nascent ef­fort to de­vel­op CAR-T ther­a­pies for sol­id tu­mor can­cers. The San Diego biotech has worked out an ex­clu­sive li­cens­ing deal with Wayne Maras­co — an ex­pert in an­ti­body en­gi­neer­ing — to ap­ply his method of link­ing two sin­gle-chain vari­able frag­ment (scFv) in a bis­pe­cif­ic CAR-T such that the T cells are on­ly ac­ti­vat­ed when both tar­gets are en­gaged, there­by lim­it­ing off-tu­mor tox­i­c­i­ty. On­coSec’s fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion in the re­search, which in­volves test­ing the ex­per­i­men­tal treat­ment so­lo and in com­bi­na­tion with Ta­vo in triple-neg­a­tive breast can­cer, will be “mod­est” and spread over sev­er­al years, CEO Daniel O’Con­nor said.

→ Af­ter win­ning the FDA nod for low blood platelet count (throm­bo­cy­tope­nia) in adults with chron­ic liv­er dis­ease (CLD) who are sched­uled to un­der­go a med­ical or den­tal pro­ce­dure, the la­bel of Do­va Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal’s Doptelet on Thurs­day was ex­pand­ed to in­clude pa­tients with chron­ic im­mune throm­bo­cy­tope­nia (ITP) who have had an in­suf­fi­cient re­sponse to a pre­vi­ous treat­ment. The com­pa­ny’s shares $DO­VA leapt about 27.5% to $13.50 in morn­ing trad­ing. The FDA’s en­dorse­ment comes about a week af­ter Eu­ro­pean reg­u­la­tors al­so backed the drug for use in se­vere throm­bo­cy­tope­nia in adult pa­tients with CLD who are sched­uled to un­der­go an in­va­sive pro­ce­dure. Mean­while, late-stage da­ta from a study eval­u­at­ing the drug’s use in chemother­a­py-in­duced throm­bo­cy­tope­nia are ex­pect­ed in the first half of 2020.

→ The re­cent­ly-pub­lic Ver­ri­ca Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals‘ $VR­CA ex­per­i­men­tal drug, VP-102, has cleared a mid-stage study in pa­tients with com­mon warts. The drug’s “ef­fi­ca­cy and tol­er­a­bil­i­ty has been fur­ther con­firmed with the pos­i­tive Phase II COVE-1 tri­al in com­mon warts, and is now de-risked in an ad­di­tion­al in­di­ca­tion. We be­lieve this pro­vides ad­di­tion­al (and not mod­eled) up­side for VR­CA as our val­u­a­tion tar­gets are based pure­ly on VP-102 in mol­lus­cum con­ta­gio­sum which re­mains on track for a po­ten­tial H2:2020 launch,” Cowen an­a­lysts wrote in a note. The com­pa­ny said it is on track to sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion to mar­ket the drug for pa­tients with mol­lus­cum con­ta­gio­sum — a vi­ral skin in­fec­tion some­times called wa­ter warts — lat­er this year.

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

Not even one month after Big Pharma took notice of Artiva when Merck signed a collaboration worth nearly $2 billion in milestones, the off-the-shelf NK cell biotech already has its next big fundraise.

Artiva returns from the venture well Friday with a $120 million Series B round, money they will use to get their first program into the clinic and to file INDs for another two candidates. The raise marks the latest development in a rapidly expanding footprint for Artiva, which, in addition to the Merck deal last month, has now raised almost $200 million since its Series A last June.

Biotech Voices is a collection of exclusive opinion editorials from some of the leading voices in biopharma on the biggest industry questions today. Think you have a voice that should be heard? Reach out to senior editors Kyle Blankenship and Amber Tong.

We often think a person’s transition from a healthy to a diseased state is binary. But that’s often not the case. In reality, the onset of a disease is not something that occurs overnight, and the majority lie on a continuum that is impacted by a multitude of factors. Some of these factors are in a patient’s control. Others are not.

This is the case in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), two of the most complex diseases that “live” on this proverbial continuum. The clinical onset of NAFLD — and ultimately NASH — is a complex process that is closely related to obesity, insulin resistance and impaired adipose tissue metabolism.