Play-by-play of Gilead’s $21B Immunomedics buyout details a frenzied push — and mints a new biotech billionaire

Daniel O'Day, Gilead CEO (Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

September 25, 2020 07:53 AM EDTUpdated 02:52 PM

Play-by-play of Gilead's $21B Immunomedics buyout details a frenzied push — and mints a new biotech billionaire

Max Gelman

Senior Editor

Immunomedics had not really been looking for a buyout when the year began. Excited by its BLA for Trodelvy, submitted to the FDA in late 2019, executive chairman Behzad Aghazadeh started off looking for potential licensing deals and zeroed in on four potential partners, including Gilead, following January’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. Such talks advanced throughout the year, with discussions advancing to the second round in mid-August.

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Innovative MedTech Demands Specialist Clinical Trial Regulatory Affairs and Design

Tom Avery

Scientific and Medical Affairs Specialist, Medical Devices

Avance Clinical is the Australian CRO for international biotechs providing world-class clinical research services with FDA-accepted data across all phases. With Avance Clinical, biotech companies can leverage Australia’s supportive clinical trials environment which includes no IND requirement plus a 43.5% Government incentive rebate on clinical spend. The CRO has been delivering clinical drug development services for international biotechs for FDA and EMA regulatory approval for the past 24 years. The company has been recognized for the past two consecutive years with the prestigious Frost & Sullivan CRO Best Practices Award and a finalist in Informa Pharma’s Best CRO award for 2022.

Mathai Mammen (Rob Tannenbaum, Endpoints News at BIO 2018)

August 8, 2022 07:54 PM EDTUpdated August 9, 06:57 AM

People

Mathai Mammen makes an abrupt exit as head of the big R&D group at J&J

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

In an after-the-bell shocker, J&J announced Monday evening that Mathai Mammen has abruptly exited J&J as head of its top-10 R&D group.

Recruited from Merck five years ago, where the soft-spoken Mammen was being groomed as the successor to Roger Perlmutter, he had been one of the top-paid R&D chiefs in biopharma. His group spent $12 billion last year on drug development, putting it in the top 5 in the industry.

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August 10, 2022 07:33 AM EDT

Pharma

Amid massive restructuring, Biogen looks to reduce physical presence in Boston

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Biogen is putting a sizable chunk of office and research space in Kendall Square and Weston, MA up for sublease, marking another big change as the biotech grapples with the aftershock of a disastrous and controversial rollout for its Alzheimer’s drug.

The company calls it “part of Biogen’s overall implementation of the ‘Future of Work,’ which is allowing us to optimize our footprint and reduce the amount of space we occupy, taking into consideration new elements such as the hybrid work model,” the Boston Globe reported, quoting a spokesperson.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Chief Scientific Officer

Experimental Drug Development Centre

Singapore

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Robert Califf, FDA commissioner (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

August 10, 2022 07:19 AM EDT

FDA+

Hoping to expand monkeypox vaccine supply, US paves the way for new route of administration

Nicole DeFeudis

Editor

After making it clear that the US’ current monkeypox vaccine supply is insufficient, the FDA on Tuesday authorized a new route of administration that should increase the number of available doses by five-fold.

Regulators cleared Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine for intradermal injection in adults older than 18. Unlike subcutaneous injection — the current method by which vaccine is delivered under the skin — an intradermal jab goes directly into the skin. It’s believed that this method requires less vaccine, since the dermis is rich in dendritic cells which specialize in taking up foreign antigens and presenting them to the immune system, according to Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

John Quisel, Disc Medicine CEO

August 10, 2022 07:43 AM EDT

R&D

Disc Medicine goes public in reverse merger with struggling Gemini Therapeutics

Lei Lei Wu

News Reporter

After licensing a failed Roche schizophrenia drug last year, Disc Medicine is going public via a reverse merger with Gemini Therapeutics.

The combined company, while still named Disc Medicine, will trade under the stock symbol $IRON, in reference to Disc’s lineup of therapies for blood iron disorders. Alongside the merger, Disc has secured $53.5 million in another financing round, building on the $90 million Series B it raised in September.

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Illustration: Kim Ryu for Endpoints News

August 9, 2022 07:00 AM EDTUpdated 08:48 AM

R&D

In Focus

Why non-opioid pain drugs keep failing — and what's next for the field

Lei Lei Wu

News Reporter

In 1938, Rita Levi-Montalcini was forced to move her lab into her bedroom in Turin, as Mussolini’s facist government expelled Jewish people from studying or working in schools in Italy. Levi-Montalcini, then just a few years out of medical school and using sewing needles as scalpels in her makeshift lab, would soon discover nerve growth factor, or NGF, in chicken embryos.

Her discoveries formed the basis of our understanding of the peripheral nervous system and how cells talk to each other, and Levi-Montalcini went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1986. Much later, NGF was hailed as a promising target for new pain therapies, with some analysts quoting an $11 billion market. However, the latest anti-NGF candidate, Pfizer and Eli Lilly’s tanezumab, was rejected by the FDA last year because of a side effect that dissolved bone in some of its patients.

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Ted Love, Global Blood Therapeutics CEO

August 8, 2022 07:34 AM EDTUpdated 11:57 AM

Deals

Updated: Pfizer scoops up Global Blood Therapeutics and its sickle cell therapies for $5.4B

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Pfizer is dropping $5.4 billion to acquire Global Blood Therapeutics.

Just ahead of the weekend, word got out that Pfizer was close to clinching a $5 billion buyout — albeit with other potential buyers still at the table. The pharma giant, flush with cash from Covid-19 vaccine sales, apparently got out on top.

The deal immediately swells Pfizer’s previously tiny sickle cell disease portfolio from just a Phase I program to one with an approved drug, Oxbryta, plus a whole pipeline that, if all approved, the company believes could make for a $3 billion franchise at peak.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Senior Project Manager

CAI

Boston, MA, USA

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Samantha Du, Zai Lab CEO

August 10, 2022 06:35 AM EDT

R&D

Anyone still looking for a CD47? Zai Lab shelves PhI program after reviewing 'competitive landscape'

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Over the past few years, the promise of blocking CD47 — a “don’t eat me” signal co-opted by cancer cells — has sent drugmakers big and small into a frenzy. But one biotech is now bowing out.

Zai Lab is deprioritizing ZL-1201, its CD47 inhibitor, scrapping plans for a Phase II trial. It will now “pursue out-licensing opportunities,” the company said in its Q2 update. The decision was based on a review of the competitive landscape, it added, without going into further details.

Craig Thompson, Cerevance CEO

August 9, 2022 08:01 AM EDTUpdated 11:02 AM

Deals

UPDATED: Merck makes first big splash for Alzheimer’s drug R&D since 2017 fail, inking research pact with Cerevance

Kyle LaHucik

Associate Editor

For the first time since discontinuing its late-stage Alzheimer’s program, Merck has found promise on the path forward in the memory-robbing disease.

After a Phase III flop of its drug verubecestat, the New Jersey Big Pharma axed the study in early 2018. More than four years later, the company is ready to sign up for another pact to test the waters of the befuddling disease.

This time, there’s $1.1 billion in biobucks on the line and a target that its partner says no other biopharma is looking at en route to finding the next treatment for Alzheimer’s, a neuroscience field that has hit hurdle after hurdle for decades.

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