As Pfiz­er builds a whole fran­chise of ge­net­ic prod­ucts on the cor­ner­stone of its mR­NA Covid-19 vac­cine, it’s test­ing out a new way to man­u­fac­ture them.

Touch­light, which has been net­ting deals in the ever-ex­pand­ing and com­pet­i­tive DNA man­u­fac­tur­ing space, has inked a non-ex­clu­sive patent li­cense agree­ment with Pfiz­er. The deal gives Pfiz­er rights to Touch­light’s en­zy­mat­ic DNA, called dog­gy­bone DNA, or dbD­NA, to man­u­fac­ture and com­mer­cial­ize mR­NA-based vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics as well as DNA vac­cines and gene ther­a­pies.

Touch­light will re­ceive an up­front pay­ment, as well as clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial mile­stone pay­ments and roy­al­ties up­on com­mer­cial­iza­tion. How­ev­er, no hard fig­ures or oth­er fi­nan­cial de­tails were dis­closed to End­points News.

CEO Karen Fall­en said in an in­ter­view with End­points that the deal with Pfiz­er is in re­sponse to the rise in pop­u­lar­i­ty of RNA vac­cines dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Touch­light has been in con­tact with play­ers in the RNA field in­clud­ing Pfiz­er but can­not dis­close when ne­go­ti­a­tions ex­act­ly kicked off.

Where­as plas­mid DNA is typ­i­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured in bac­te­r­i­al cells, Touch­light said its dbD­NA plat­form is dif­fer­ent from the rest of the mar­ket in that it us­es en­zymes to am­pli­fy a cir­cu­lar DNA tem­plate, al­low­ing the com­pa­ny to quick­ly — and in a small foot­print — man­u­fac­ture a large quan­ti­ty of GMP dbD­NA vec­tors com­pa­ra­ble to the stan­dard plas­mid DNA. In the mak­ing of mR­NA vac­cines, the dbD­NA would serve as start­ing ma­te­r­i­al.

“It’s great to have our tech­nol­o­gy used by some of the Big Phar­mas, so it’s a re­al­ly nice deal for Touch­light,” Fall­en said.

Pfiz­er will even­tu­al­ly man­u­fac­ture dog­gy­bone DNA in their fa­cil­i­ties for their use but where, when and how it will be ap­plied has al­so not been dis­closed.

Touch­light, which cur­rent­ly has GMP man­u­fac­tur­ing suites up and run­ning at its fa­cil­i­ty in Lon­don, will ex­pand its fa­cil­i­ty and put an ex­tra 11 man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties in place, which should be live in Q4 of this year, but no fur­ther de­tails were pro­vid­ed.

Tom­my Dun­can

For Touch­light, the com­pa­ny has been on the move over the past year. In 2021, the com­pa­ny re­ceived an ex­ten­sion of a $60 mil­lion fund­ing round which brought their to­tal fundrais­ing round to a to­tal of $125 mil­lion.

Tom­my Dun­can, Touch­light’s chief busi­ness of­fi­cer, said that this fi­nanc­ing was a mas­sive dri­ve for­ward for the com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny was able to ex­pand across the mR­NA mar­ket, as well as sev­er­al emerg­ing mar­kets, in­clud­ing gene edit­ing, DNA vac­cines and non-vi­ral gene ther­a­py.

The com­pa­ny was al­so able to se­cure a con­tract with Ver­sameb to pro­vide its dbD­NA for the com­pa­ny’s pipeline.

With the fi­nanc­ing squared away, Dun­can said the com­pa­ny has no im­me­di­ate fi­nanc­ing plans or no IPO at the mo­ment and will fo­cus on the broad­er ge­net­ic med­i­cine space.

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

Incyte touted an accelerated approval for its PD-1 retifanlimab in a rare skin cancer on Wednesday, roughly a year and a half after the drug suffered a rejection in squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCAC).

Retifanlimab, marketed as Zynyz, was approved for metastatic or recurrent locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a fast-growing skin cancer typically characterized by a single, painless nodule. It’s roughly 40 times rarer than melanoma, according to the nonprofit Skin Cancer Foundation — but incidence is growing, particularly among older adults, Incyte said in its announcement.