Seat­tle-based Presage Bio­sciences, which ap­proach­es drug de­vel­op­ment through its mi­cro­dos­ing plat­form, has some new part­ner­ships and cash to come with them.

Presage closed a $13 mil­lion fi­nanc­ing round Tues­day, aim­ing to ex­pand its net­work of clin­i­cal tri­al sites and ad­vance de­vel­op­ment of its mi­cro­dos­ing in­jec­tion de­vices. They al­so closed part­ner­ship deals with Mer­ck and Mav­er­ick Ther­a­peu­tics.

The fi­nanc­ing in­clud­ed $7 mil­lion from new in­vestors, in­clud­ing the Lab­Corp Ven­ture Fund, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, and In­Harv Part­ners. An ad­di­tion­al $6 mil­lion con­vert­ible note from Take­da Ven­tures will con­vert to eq­ui­ty.

Presage’s big idea cen­ters around what they call Phase 0 test­ing, which us­es mi­cro­dos­es of mul­ti­ple drugs and com­bos on pa­tients to gauge their phar­ma­co­dy­nam­ic ef­fects. Their tech al­lows re­searchers to pep­per a tu­mor with mul­ti­ple ther­a­pies while in use by pa­tients, pro­vid­ing a bet­ter snap­shot of rel­a­tive ac­tiv­i­ty.

Tues­day’s new re­search col­lab­o­ra­tions with Mer­ck and Mav­er­ick will uti­lize Presage’s plat­form to eval­u­ate new on­col­o­gy pro­grams in these Phase 0 tri­als, bring­ing their to­tal num­ber of part­ners to five.

Kem­Pharm AD­HD drug wins ap­proval in chil­dren 6 and up

Kem­Pharm scored a new ap­proval on Wednes­day, and it’s send­ing their stock soar­ing.

The Cel­e­bra­tion, FL-based biotech notched the FDA OK for Azs­tarys, a once-dai­ly treat­ment for AD­HD in chil­dren aged six and old­er. Azs­tarys, for­mer­ly dubbed KP415, con­sists of serdexmethylphenidate, Kem­Pharm’s pro­drug of the drug Fo­calin, co-for­mu­lat­ed with an im­me­di­ate-re­lease ver­sion of the prod­uct.

Shares of Kem­Pharm $KMPH sky­rock­et­ed as much as 90% in ear­ly Wednes­day trad­ing, set­tling in at around a 70% in­crease lat­er in the morn­ing. Azs­tarys will be com­mer­cial­ly avail­able as soon as the sec­ond half of this year, and that process will be led by a sub­sidiary of Gur­net Point Cap­i­tal.

The ap­proval will al­so trig­ger a mile­stone pay­ment from Gur­net Point Cap­i­tal to Kem­Pharm, which may to­tal up to $468 mil­lion.

AD­HD has been a lu­cra­tive mar­ket for drug­mak­ers, ac­count­ing for near­ly $18 bil­lion of rev­enue in 2019, Kem­Pharm said.

The pe­di­atric field has proven tough for com­peti­tors, though, with the FDA spurn­ing Su­per­nus’ pitch last No­vem­ber. Reg­u­la­tors cit­ed con­cerns about an in-house lab used to an­a­lyze their ex­per­i­men­tal drug.

In biopharma, driving a drug to market is the ultimate goal — but none of that happens without a strong research and development program. At the most successful companies, those R&D efforts are spearheaded by true innovators in the field who are always looking for that next novel mechanism of action or breakthrough safety profile.

Now, Endpoints News is asking you to tell us who those guiding lights are.

Capitol Hill heavyweight Jim Greenwood is taking his decades of experience in the intertwining worlds of biopharma and Congress to the law firm DLA Piper, where he’s opening up a new policy and regulatory practice alongside former Pfizer lawyer Geoffrey Levitt.

As Congress wrangles over how to bring down drug prices, the former BIO CEO told Endpoints News in an interview that his top three priorities will be, “Price controls, price controls and price controls.”

In oncology, a flush of Chinese-developed drugs has the biopharma industry rethinking the poles of power in R&D as the blossoming nation continues to make a name for itself and pick up bundles of cash in the process. Now, as its lead drug faces a pivotal FDA review, the company formerly known as Chi-Med is planting its flag on home soil with a massive public offering.

Hutchmed — recently renamed from Chi-Med, or Hutchison China MediTech — will look to raise $603 million as part of a Hong Kong IPO that serves as a homecoming of sorts for the Chinese-based oncology player, which has listed on Nasdaq since 2016.