Sh­iono­gi moved a cou­ple of months ago to get in tight with a low-pro­file biotech called Tetra Ther­a­peu­tics in Grand Rapids, MI. And what­ev­er they learned about their 2 Phase II stud­ies in Alzheimer’s and Frag­ile X syn­drome per­suad­ed the phar­ma play­er to ante up to $500 mil­lion more on a buy­out.

Tues­day morn­ing, Sh­iono­gi an­nounced that it is buy­ing Tetra out­right as the biotech nav­i­gates the fi­nal stretch­es on 2 mid-stage tri­als.

Both in­di­ca­tions are in the ex­treme high-risk cat­e­go­ry, with Tetra build­ing on a se­ries of grants to test its own ap­proach on pro­tect­ing the neu­ronal con­nec­tions that play a ma­jor role in cog­ni­tion and mem­o­ry.

Their lead drug is BPN14770, which tar­gets an en­zyme that is sup­posed to mod­u­late PDE4D. Sh­iono­gi orig­i­nal­ly got in­volved with Tetra back in 2018, when ex­ecs signed up li­cens­ing rights in Asia.

In March Sh­iono­gi fol­lowed up with a deal to ex­pand its stake in Tetra to 50%, ink­ing an op­tion on the buy­out based on the read­out for the Phase II PI­CAS­SO AD study in Alzheimer’s.

The an­nounce­ment, though, is short on fi­nan­cial de­tails. That’s not too sur­pris­ing, as Sh­iono­gi is ex­pand­ing in­to a field not­ed for 10 years of fail­ure and con­tro­ver­sy. Alzheimer’s has re­sist­ed just about every­thing thrown against it, with no suc­cess in mod­u­lat­ing the dis­ease it­self. Bio­gen has at­tract­ed equal parts of praise and crit­i­cism for its own at­tempt at get­ting a drug across the fin­ish line.

We can now wait for near-term proof-of-con­cept da­ta from Sh­iono­gi, which is keep­ing the lit­tle biotech as a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary.

Just four months after scoring its first cancer drug approval in a decade, Sanofi is staying on the oncology offensive.

The French pharma is planning to accelerate the development of potential treatments, partnering with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in a five-year collaboration. By combining Sanofi’s pipeline with MD Anderson’s top-notch clinical trial program in oncology, the pair will launch biomarker-driven clinical studies to better understand which drug cocktails can effectively curb cancer progression.

Cytokinetics’ ALS programs may have seen better days, but its cardiovascular division has attracted well-backed partners, including Amgen and Royalty Pharma, who, in 2017 paid $90 million in exchange for a 4.5% royalty on their lead heart drug.

Now a Chinese drugmaker and a major investor are signing onto their second cardiovascular candidate, an experimental drug known as CK-274 and designed to treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathies — genetic conditions that cause heart muscles to become abnormally and potentially dangerously thick. Ji Xing Pharmaceuticals will pay Cytokinetics $25 million upfront for the rights to commercialize the drug in China and certain neighboring regions, along with $200 million in potential milestones.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s push to raise $4 billion for his blank check company, Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, is casting a spotlight on the SPACs. And amid a historic SPAC boom, biotechs are setting several records on what some observers say is shaping up to be a third major track — besides IPO and M&A — to go public.

“SPACs were approximately 3% of the IPO market back in 2014, now they are almost 35% of all new listings,” Jay Heller, the Nasdaq’s head of capital markets, told Endpoints News.