→ 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.

Known in the in­dus­try as the Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO, Novotech is now lead CRO ser­vices provider for the grow­ing num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al biotechs se­lect­ing the re­gion for their stud­ies.

Re­flect­ing this Asia-Pa­cif­ic growth, Novotech staff num­bers are up 20% since De­cem­ber 2018 to 600 in-house clin­i­cal re­search peo­ple across a full range of ser­vices, across the re­gion.

Novotech’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties have been rec­og­nized by an­a­lysts like Frost & Sul­li­van, most re­cent­ly with the pres­ti­gious Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO Biotech of the year award for best prac­tices in clin­i­cal re­search for biotechs for the fifth year. See oth­er awards here.

→ Alex­ion $ALXN has scored a speedy re­view for Ul­tomiris for pa­tients with atyp­i­cal he­molyt­ic ure­mic syn­drome (aHUS) af­ter post­ing pos­i­tive da­ta from a piv­otal study in Jan­u­ary. The drug is the rare dis­ease com­pa­ny’s shot at pro­tect­ing its block­buster blood dis­or­der fran­chise that is cur­rent­ly cen­tered around its flag­ship drug, Soliris, which is a com­ple­ment in­hibitor typ­i­cal­ly ad­min­is­tered every two weeks. Ul­tomiris has a sim­i­lar mech­a­nism of ac­tion but re­quires less-fre­quent dos­ing — every eight weeks. The de­ci­sion date has been set to Oc­to­ber 19. Late last year, Ul­tomiris se­cured ap­proval for noc­tur­nal he­mo­glo­bin­uria (PNH) pa­tients.

The NASH par­ty is over at No­var­tis-backed Cona­tus. And this time they’re turn­ing off the lights.

More than 2 years af­ter No­var­tis sur­prised the biotech in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty with its $50 mil­lion up­front and promise of R&D sup­port to part­ner with the lit­tle biotech on NASH — ig­nit­ing a light­ning strike for the share price — Cona­tus $CNAT is back with the lat­est bit­ter tale to tell about em­ri­c­as­an, which once in­spired con­fi­dence at the phar­ma gi­ant.

Fresh off the high of its Nas­daq IPO de­but, and the low of com­par­isons to Cymabay — whose NASH drug re­cent­ly stum­bled — Gen­fit on Mon­day un­veiled an up to $228 mil­lion deal with transpa­cif­ic biotech Terns Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to de­vel­op its flag­ship ex­per­i­men­tal liv­er drug — elafi­bra­nor — in Greater Chi­na.

The deal comes more than a week af­ter Gen­fit $GN­FT is­sued a fiery de­fense of its dual PPAR ag­o­nist elafi­bra­nor, when com­peti­tor Cymabay’s PPARδ ag­o­nist, se­ladel­par, fiz­zled in a snap­shot of da­ta from an on­go­ing mid-stage tri­al. The main goal at the end of 12 weeks was for se­ladel­par to in­duce a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in liv­er fat con­tent, but da­ta showed that pa­tients on the place­bo ac­tu­al­ly per­formed bet­ter.

Ear­li­er in the week we learned that Sanofi was bring­ing out the bud­get ax to trim 466 R&D jobs in Eu­rope, re­tool­ing its ap­proach to car­dio as re­search chief John Reed beefed up their work in can­cer and gene ther­a­pies. And we’re end­ing the week with news that the phar­ma gi­ant has al­so been qui­et­ly re­duc­ing staff in the US, tar­get­ing hun­dreds of jobs as the com­pa­ny push­es vol­un­tary buy­outs with a fo­cus on R&D sup­port ser­vices.

A month af­ter roil­ing in­vestors with what skep­tics dis­missed as cher­ry pick­ing of its de­pres­sion da­ta, Min­er­va is back with a clean slate of da­ta from its Phase IIb in­som­nia tri­al.

In a de­tailed up­date, the Waltham, MA-based biotech said sel­torex­ant (MIN-202) hit both the pri­ma­ry and sev­er­al sec­ondary end­points, ef­fec­tive­ly im­prov­ing sleep in­duc­tion and pro­long­ing sleep du­ra­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors made a point to note that the ef­fects were con­sis­tent across the adult and el­der­ly pop­u­la­tions, with the lat­ter more prone to the sleep dis­or­der.

Shares of Krys­tal Biotech took off this morn­ing $KRYS af­ter the lit­tle biotech re­port­ed promis­ing re­sults from its gene ther­a­py to treat a rare skin dis­ease called epi­der­mol­y­sis bul­losa.

Fo­cus­ing on an up­date with 4 new pa­tients, re­searchers spot­light­ed the suc­cess of KB103 in clos­ing some stub­born wounds. Krys­tal says that of 4 re­cur­ring and 2 chron­ic skin wounds treat­ed with the gene ther­a­py, the KB103 group saw the clo­sure of 5. The 6th — a chron­ic wound, de­fined as a wound that had re­mained open for more than 12 weeks — was par­tial­ly closed. That brings the to­tal so far to 8 treat­ed wounds, with 7 clo­sures.

Three months af­ter reg­u­la­tors at the FDA forced Ab­b­Vie to halt en­rolling pa­tients in its tri­als of a com­bi­na­tion us­ing Ven­clex­ta (vene­to­clax) to treat drug-re­sis­tant cas­es of mul­ti­ple myelo­ma, the agency has green-light­ed the re­sump­tion of one of those stud­ies, while keep­ing the rest on the side­lines.

The CANO­VA (M13-494) study can now get back in busi­ness re­cruit­ing pa­tients to test the drug for a pop­u­la­tion that shares a par­tic­u­lar ge­net­ic bio­mark­er. To get that per­mis­sion, Ab­b­Vie — which is part­nered with Roche on this pro­gram — was forced to re­vise the pro­to­col, mak­ing un­spec­i­fied changes in­volv­ing risk mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures, pro­to­col-spec­i­fied guide­lines and an up­dat­ed fu­til­i­ty cri­te­ria.