→ 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.

A plant located in Wrexham, Wales that is packing the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine into vials was surrounded by a bomb squad after officials called police to report a suspicious package.

The alert caused a partial evacuation of the plant, the BBC was among those to report Wednesday. The owner of the plant, British drugmaker Wockhardt UK, said it was cooperating with local authorities and that there were no reports of any injuries.

Hours before President Biden’s Covid-19 team gave their first virtual press conference, the famed AIDS researcher David Ho delivered concerning news in a new pre-print: SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351, the variant that emerged in South Africa, is “markedly more resistant” to antibodies from convalescent plasma and vaccinated individuals.

The news for several monoclonal antibodies, including Eli Lilly’s bamlanivimab, was even worse: Their ability to neutralize was “completely or markedly abolished,” Ho wrote. Lilly’s antibody cocktail, which was just shown to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalizations or death, also became far less potent.

Psychedelics have made a comeback for mental health research, with companies like startup biotech ATAI Life Sciences raising millions and earning the backing of prominent investors like Peter Thiel, but there’s a hole at the heart of the resurgence: Researchers still don’t fully understand how they work.

A new partnership between ATAI and world-renowned Mass General Hospital hopes to change that.