→ Just days ago, MD An­der­son re­searcher Jen­nifer War­go and col­leagues pub­lished new re­search that showed how the gut mi­cro­bio­me played a big role in de­ter­min­ing whether or not a check­point ther­a­py could help save your life. This morn­ing, MD An­der­son and the sci­en­tif­ic net­work afi­ciona­dos at the Park­er In­sti­tute have put a deal to­geth­er to col­lab­o­rate with lead­ing mi­crio­bio­me biotech Seres on a pill. Seres’ $MCRB bac­te­ria pill is the pre­clin­i­cal SER-401. And the biotech land­ed a deal for MD An­der­son’s IP. The Park­er In­sti­tute will spon­sor a clin­i­cal tri­al to see if it works.

→ Re­search Tri­an­gle Park, NC-based Lo­cus Bio­sciences has round­ed up a $17 mil­lion A round to start mov­ing its an­timi­cro­bials in­to the clin­ic. The biotech is us­ing CRISPR-Cas tech to cre­ate a new ap­proach to coun­ter­at­tack­ing against drug-re­sis­tant su­per­bugs. AR­TIS Ven­tures led the round, with ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing from Ten­cent Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, Ab­stract Ven­tures, and the North Car­oli­na Biotech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter.

→ The FDA has ap­proved a pill for schiz­o­phre­nia that in­cludes a dig­i­tal sen­sor that records that the pa­tient has tak­en the med­ica­tion, dis­patch­ing the in­for­ma­tion via a patch worn on the skin. The prod­uct is Ot­su­ka Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal’s Abil­i­fy MyCite. The tech is there for an ob­vi­ous rea­son, with ap­pli­ca­tions in men­tal health for en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with dos­ing. By all ac­counts, these new dig­i­tal prod­ucts will be­come a rou­tine fea­ture in med­i­cine.

→ In an agree­ment that in­volved form­ing a new sub­sidiary, Itus Cor­po­ra­tion has se­cured an ex­clu­sive world­wide li­cense to The Wis­tar In­sti­tute’s CAR-T tech­nol­o­gy aimed at treat­ing sol­id tu­mors — ovar­i­an can­cer be­ing its first tar­get. Cer­tain­ty Ther­a­peu­tics is the name of the new com­pa­ny ma­jor­i­ty owned by the biotech $ITUS, a sis­ter to Itus’ can­cer de­tec­tion sub­sidiary Anixa Di­ag­nos­tics. While CAR-T has seen ex­cit­ing re­sults in B-cell can­cers, lit­tle progress on sol­id tu­mors has been made, CEO Amit Ku­mar said in a state­ment, and Itus is “ex­cit­ed to be at the fore­front of us­ing CAR-T tech­nol­o­gy against sol­id tu­mors,” in­clud­ing prostate, pan­cre­at­ic and oth­er can­cers.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

The National Institutes of Health has again declined to use so-called “march-in” rights to lower the price of Astellas and Pfizer’s prostate cancer drug Xtandi despite being invented at UCLA with grants from the US Army and NIH.

“Given the remaining patent life and the lengthy administrative process involved for a march-in proceeding, NIH does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug,” NIH told prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs and Clare Love, in a letter shared with Endpoints News. The institutes’ analyses found Xtandi “to be widely available to the public,” an indication that there was not a pressing need for the US to act.