Ox­ford Vacmedix moves can­cer vac­cines for­ward with $12.5M from South Ko­rea, Chi­na

South Ko­rea and Chi­nese in­vestors have sunk a col­lec­tive $12.5 mil­lion in­to an Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty spin­out that promis­es a more ef­fi­cient and cheap­er way to make can­cer vac­cines.

Shisong Jiang

The fi­nanc­ing round po­ten­tial­ly opens up the Ko­re­an mar­ket for Ox­ford Vacmedix (OVM), which al­ready out-li­censed its re­com­bi­nant over­lap­ping pep­tide tech­nol­o­gy to a joint ven­ture reg­is­tered in Hong Kong. Much of the sci­ence, how­ev­er, ac­tu­al­ly takes place in Changzhou (be­tween Nan­jing and Shang­hai), where an OVM cen­ter has been con­duct­ing ear­ly-stage val­i­da­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­oped by sci­en­tif­ic founder and CSO Shisong Jiang.

He found a way to pro­duce over­lap­ping pep­tides in a bac­te­r­i­al sys­tem, rather than syn­the­siz­ing them chem­i­cal­ly, re­sult­ing in an end­less stream of re­com­bi­nant pro­tein and the over­lap­ping pep­tides.

Jiang, who earned his med­ical de­gree in Chi­na, came to Ox­ford by way of the Lon­don School of Hy­giene and Trop­i­cal Med­i­cine and Har­vard’s Dana Far­ber Can­cer In­sti­tute, where he com­plet­ed his PhD and did post-doc work, re­spec­tive­ly. He start­ed down the road of en­tre­pre­neur­ship in 2012 and im­me­di­ate­ly looked to Chi­na for growth op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Both pri­vate in­vestors — with back­grounds in con­struc­tion/en­gi­neer­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing, re­spec­tive­ly — and the gov­ern­ment chipped in for the Changzhou fa­cil­i­ty, and have come back for this round of fi­nanc­ing.

An­tho­ny Coombs

They are joined by Can­cer ROP, a South Ko­re­an health­care in­sti­tu­tion that re­cent­ly start­ed fo­cus­ing on can­cer drugs. It is al­so close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with one of the biggest hos­pi­tal groups in the coun­try, Ox­ford Vacmedix di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Coombs told End­points News, which can help the biotech iden­ti­fy where its can­cer vac­cines can best be used.

“We look for­ward to a pro­duc­tive and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial part­ner­ship with OVM es­pe­cial­ly in glob­al clin­i­cal tri­al as­pects and con­fi­dent that we can sup­port the con­tin­ued growth and de­vel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny,” said Can­cer ROP CEO Wang-Jun Lee in a state­ment.

The new funds will car­ry OVM through pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment to the be­gin­ning of Phase I tri­als in two lead pro­grams: OVM-100 is an HPV vac­cine tar­get­ing cer­vi­cal can­cer, while OVM-200 at­tacks sol­id tu­mors with an apop­to­sis in­hibitor called sur­vivin. (The PhI tri­als are ex­pect­ed to com­mence this year.) The biotech is al­so hop­ing to de­vel­op its man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ties from lab to pro­duc­tion scale, at which point it plans to out­source the work to a UK con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Asian mon­ey has been flow­ing around the UK.

When British Prime Min­is­ter There­sa May vis­it­ed Chi­na last month, Chi­nese in­vestors pledged $1.3 bil­lion to UK life sci­ence in­vest­ments, and Bei­jing’s Ts­ingHua Uni­ver­si­ty un­veiled a joint ear­ly-stage re­search cen­ter with Cam­bridge’s Trin­i­ty Col­lege. South Ko­rea’s largest ven­ture cap­i­tal firm, Ko­rea In­vest­ment Part­ners, backed UK syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy play­er Prokar­i­um in a $10 mil­lion round an­nounced just days ago.

”(T)here’s a lot of ap­petite in Asia (…) peo­ple are very in­ter­est­ed to ac­tu­al­ly en­gage with the re­al­ly good aca­d­e­m­ic work that’s be­ing done in Ox­ford,” Coombs said.

Forge Bi­o­log­ics’ cGMP Com­pli­ant and Com­mer­cial­ly Vi­able Be­spoke Affin­i­ty Chro­matog­ra­phy Plat­form

Forge Biologics has developed a bespoke affinity chromatography platform approach that factors in unique vector combinations to streamline development timelines and assist our clients in efficiently entering the clinic. By leveraging our experience with natural and novel serotypes and transgene conformations, we are able to accelerate affinity chromatography development by nearly 3-fold. Many downstream purification models are serotype-dependent, demanding unique and time-consuming development strategies for each AAV gene therapy product1. With the increasing demand to propel AAV gene therapies to market, platform purification methods that support commercial-scale manufacturing of high-quality vectors with excellent safety and efficacy profiles are essential.

Cy­to­ki­net­ics’ ALS drug fails PhI­II, leav­ing the biotech with a sin­gle late-stage prospect

Cytokinetics’ candidate for the muscle disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, failed a Phase III trial, the Bay Area biotech announced Friday morning.

At a second interim analysis of the trial, an independent review committee recommended that Cytokinetics discontinue its COURAGE-ALS trial for reldesemtiv, as it “found no evidence of effect” compared to placebo on the primary or key secondary endpoints.

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CHMP gives thumbs-up for We­govy use in ado­les­cents, along with nine new drug rec­om­men­da­tions

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

Green­Light re­ceives buy­out of­fer; Apol­lomics com­pletes SPAC merg­er

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

Mathai Mammen, FogPharma's next CEO

Math­ai Mam­men hands in J&J's R&D keys to lead Greg Ver­dine’s Fog­Phar­ma 

In the early 1990s, Mathai Mammen was a teaching assistant in Greg Verdine’s Science B46 course at Harvard. In June, the former R&D head at Johnson & Johnson will succeed Verdine as CEO, president and chair of FogPharma, the same month the seven-year-old biotech kickstarts its first clinical trial.

After leading R&D at one of the largest drugmakers in the world, taking the company through more than half a dozen drug approvals in the past few years, not to mention a Covid-19 vaccine race, Mammen departed J&J last month and will take the helm of a Cambridge, MA biotech attempting to go after what Verdine calls the “true emperor of all oncogenes” — beta-catenin.

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TScan Therapeutics' departing CEO David Southwell and CSO/COO Gavin MacBeath

TCR up­start an­nounces CEO ex­it, with CSO now act­ing re­place­ment

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.

Austin biotech Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates lays off more than 100 staffers as pipeline nar­rows

Molecular Templates is ridding itself of a Phase I HER2 asset and fine-tuning its pipeline to focus on three programs and a preclinical Bristol Myers Squibb collaboration. With the narrowed scope on its so-called engineered toxin bodies, the Austin, TX biotech is laying off about half of its staff.

That’s a little more than 100 employees, per an SEC filing. Molecular’s layoffs, approved by its board Wednesday, add to the dozens of pullbacks in the industry in the first three months of 2023.

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Sar­to­rius to ac­quire French man­u­fac­tur­er for $2.6B+ in cell and gene ther­a­py play

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.

Sen­ate Fi­nance Com­mit­tee lobs more bi­par­ti­san pres­sure on­to PBMs

Congress is honing in on how it wants to overhaul the rules of the road for pharmacy benefit managers, with a Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday serving as the latest example of the Hill’s readiness to make changes to how pharma middlemen operate.

While pledging to ensure patients and pharmacies “don’t get a raw deal,” Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) laid out the beginning of what looks like a major bipartisan effort — moves the PBM industry is likely to challenge vigorously.

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