→ Abeona Ther­a­peu­tics $ABEO has li­censed Re­genxbio’s $RGNX NAV AAV9 vec­tor for four dis­eases: San­fil­ip­po syn­drome type A (MPS II­IA), San­fil­ip­po syn­drome type B (MPS II­IB), In­fan­tile Bat­ten Dis­ease, al­so known as neu­ronal ceroid lipo­fus­ci­nosis type 1 (CLN1 Dis­ease), and Ju­ve­nile Bat­ten Dis­ease, al­so known as neu­ronal ceroid lipo­fus­ci­nosis type 3 (CLN3 Dis­ease). Re­genxbio is guar­an­teed $40 mil­lion in cash for the deal, in­clud­ing $20 mil­lion in near-term pay­ments, with an­oth­er $140 mil­lion in po­ten­tial fees and mile­stones.

→ With six ap­proved PD-1/L1 drugs on the mar­ket and a pletho­ra of oth­ers in de­vel­op­ment, mak­ers of check­point in­hibitors con­tin­ue to test their of­fer­ings in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er drugs to eke out a big­ger slice of the lu­cra­tive on­col­o­gy mar­ket. On Mon­day, Bris­tol-My­ers $BMY ex­pand­ed its agree­ment with In­fin­i­ty Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ $IN­FI to test Op­di­vo in com­bi­na­tion with In­fin­i­ty’s PI3K-gam­ma in­hibitor, IPI-549, in pa­tients with ad­vanced urothe­lial can­cer. The Phase II tri­al is ex­pect­ed to be­gin in the first half of 2019. A com­bi­na­tion of Op­di­vo and IPI-549 con­tin­ues to be eval­u­at­ed in a Phase I study in pa­tients with ad­vanced sol­id tu­mors.

→ In oth­er can­cer-re­lat­ed news, Take­da has ex­er­cised its ex­clu­sive op­tion to li­cense Crescen­do Bi­o­log­ics’ hum­a­bod­ies for one of its on­col­o­gy tar­gets, in a move that comes sub­stan­tial­ly ear­li­er than planned, Crescen­do said on Mon­day. The mul­ti-tar­get col­lab­o­ra­tion and li­cense agree­ment was set up in 2016. Crescen­do’s hum­a­body-based prod­ucts are an in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al class of pro­tein ther­a­peu­tics, which are de­signed to pen­e­trate and ac­cu­mu­late in tis­sue/tu­mours whilst clear­ing quick­ly from cir­cu­la­tion to min­imise sys­temic tox­i­c­i­ty.

→ In a sep­a­rate on­col­o­gy tie-up, lit­tle MEI Phar­ma $MEIP has grant­ed Tokyo-list­ed Ky­owa Hakko Kirin ex­clu­sive rights to de­vel­op and com­mer­cial­ize its ex­per­i­men­tal drug ME-401 in Japan for a $10 mil­lion up­front and po­ten­tial mile­stone pay­ments of up to $87.5 mil­lion. The drug, a PI3K delta in­hibitor, is be­ing de­vel­oped by MEI to treat B-cell ma­lig­nan­cies, and MEI is plan­ning to ini­ti­ate a Phase II study to eval­u­ate the drug in pa­tients with fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma.

→ Ger­many’s Grü­nen­thal is now the sole own­er of the der­mal pain patch Quten­za af­ter it ac­quired the re­main­ing rights to the prod­uct from Acor­da Ther­a­peu­tics $ACOR. Back in 2016, Grü­nen­thal ac­quired ex­clu­sive com­mer­cial rights for the patch — which con­tains cap­saicin, the ac­tive in­gre­di­ent in chili pep­pers — in Eu­rope, Mid­dle East and Africa. Grü­nen­thal has made a se­ries of in­vest­ments to ex­pand its ar­se­nal of pain prod­ucts, in­clud­ing ac­quir­ing the Eu­ro­pean rights to Nex­i­um and the glob­al (ex US and Japan) rights to Vi­mo­vo. 

→ An­oth­er Ger­man com­pa­ny is al­so in the news. The Mainz-based biotech BioN­Tech has tied up with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia to de­vel­op mR­NA vac­cines to pre­vent and treat a host of in­fec­tious dis­eases. The com­pa­ny, which al­ready has part­ner­ships with with Roche’s Genen­tech, Pfiz­er, Gen­mab, Eli Lil­ly, Sanofi and Bay­er, is bet­ting that mR­NA-based vac­cines rep­re­sent an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sur­pass con­ven­tion­al vac­cine ap­proach­es be­cause of their ca­pac­i­ty for rapid de­vel­op­ment and their po­ten­tial for low-cost man­u­fac­tur­ing and po­ten­tial­ly safe ad­min­is­tra­tion.

→ Is­rael’s Mapi Phar­ma has picked up its sec­ond $10 mil­lion eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment from Chi­na’s Zhe­jiang Jingx­in Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal. The Chi­nese CNS drug­mak­er made its ini­tial in­vest­ment in Mapi back in 2016.

Earlier this year, an executive from Juvenescence-backed AgeX predicted the field of longevity will eventually “dwarf the dotcom boom.” Greg Bailey, the UK-based anti-aging biotech’s CEO, certainly hopes so.

On Monday, Juvenescence completed its $100 million Series B round of financing. The company is backed by British billionaire Jim Mellon — who wrote his 400-page guide to investing in the field of longevity shortly after launching the company in 2017.  Bailey, who served as a board director for seven years at Medivation before Pfizer swallowed the biotech for $14 billion, is joined by Declan Doogan, an industry veteran with stints at Pfizer and Amarin.

Another big drug approval came through on Friday afternoon as the FDA OK’d AbbVie’s upadacitinib — an oral JAK1 inhibitor that is hitting the rheumatoid arthritis market with a black box warning of serious malignancies, infections and thrombosis reflecting fears associated with the class.

It will be sold as Rinvoq — at a wholesale price of $59,000 a year — and will likely soon face competition from a drug that AbbVie once controlled, and spurned. Reuters reports that a 4-week supply of Humira, by comparison, is $5,174, adding up to about $67,000 a year.

After a “hot” period of rapid growth between 2009 and 2012, and a relatively “cooler” period of slower growth from 2013 to 2015, China has once again become a top-of-mind priority for the CEOs of most large, multinational pharmaceutical companies.

At the International Pharma Forum, hosted in March in Beijing by the R&D Based Pharmaceutical Association Committee (RDPAC) and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), no fewer than seven CEOs of major multinational pharmaceutical firms participated, including GSK, Eli Lilly, LEO Pharma, Merck KGaA, Pfizer, Sanofi and UCB. A few days earlier, the CEOs of several other large multinationals attended the China Development Forum, an annual business forum hosted by the research arm of China’s State Council. It’s hard to imagine any other country, except the US, having such drawing power at CEO level.