Pfiz­er is in­vest­ing some mon­ey in its Ly­me dis­ease part­ner biotech as the pair gears up for a Phase III study.

The Big Phar­ma chipped in $95 mil­lion in eq­ui­ty for Val­ne­va, good enough for an 8.1% stake in the French vac­cine mak­er. Mon­day’s deal comes af­ter the two com­pa­nies ini­tial­ly agreed to de­vel­op the can­di­date in April 2020 and a few months af­ter the pro­gram read out Phase II pe­di­atric re­sults.

Kathrin Jansen

“As the ge­o­graph­ic foot­print of Ly­me dis­ease widens, the med­ical need for vac­ci­na­tion be­comes even more im­per­a­tive,” Pfiz­er’s head of vac­cines R&D Kathrin Jansen said in a state­ment. “We are ex­cit­ed to con­tin­ue part­ner­ing with Val­ne­va on the de­vel­op­ment of VLA15 and look for­ward to work­ing to­geth­er to progress the pro­gram.”

The eq­ui­ty deal val­ued Val­ne­va’s stock price at $10.02 per share. In­vestors re­act­ed warm­ly to the news, with Val­ne­va shares $VALN jump­ing 83% while the mar­ket was closed for the June­teenth hol­i­day, af­ter drop­ping 13% in the fi­nal min­utes of last Fri­day’s trad­ing ses­sion.

On top of the eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing, Pfiz­er and Val­ne­va are al­so slight­ly amend­ing their orig­i­nal Ly­me dis­ease vac­cine deal. Val­ne­va will now take on 40% of the re­main­ing shared de­vel­op­ment costs in­stead of 30%, and Pfiz­er will pay roy­al­ties rang­ing from 14% to 22% in­stead of start­ing at 19%. Pfiz­er will add an­oth­er $100 mil­lion in po­ten­tial sales mile­stones as well.

Val­ne­va had made most of its head­lines in the last cou­ple years for its work in Covid-19 vac­cines, promis­ing to de­vel­op an al­ter­na­tive shot to the wide­ly used Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and As­traZeneca jabs. Though Val­ne­va’s shot even­tu­al­ly got across the fin­ish line in the UK, the vac­cine like­ly will not be avail­able in Eu­rope much longer af­ter the EU de­cid­ed to ter­mi­nate its pur­chase agree­ment last month.

And last week, the com­pa­ny said chances of re­viv­ing the con­tract are slim, send­ing its shares plung­ing.

But the Ly­me dis­ease pro­gram has rolled right along, pass­ing a Phase II test for adults last Sep­tem­ber and achiev­ing its goals in an­oth­er Phase II study in April. Funds from Mon­day’s eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing are ex­pect­ed to go to­ward the piv­otal Phase III tri­al, which will like­ly launch in the third quar­ter, the com­pa­nies said.

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.

Allogene Therapeutics said in an SEC filing today that French partner Servier has cut off its involvement in a partnership developing therapies directed against CD19, including the most advanced candidates in Allogene’s pipeline.

Shares of Allogene $ALLO, an outfit run by Kite vets Arie Belldegrun and research chief David Chang, fell by almost 10% on Wednesday, even as the San Francisco-based company said that Servier’s discontinuation “does not otherwise affect our current exclusive license for the development and commercialization of CD19 Products in the United States.”

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.