The Mass­a­chu­setts-based, on­colyt­ic virus biotech Replimune is feel­ing bull­ish now that it has lift­ed the cov­er on da­ta for its lead prod­uct.

Replimune said Thurs­day it looks to nab about $225 mil­lion from a pub­lic of­fer­ing af­ter giv­ing a snap­shot of some ini­tial da­ta from its IGNYTE clin­i­cal study ear­li­er this week. The tri­al is in­ves­ti­gat­ing RP1 in com­bi­na­tion with Op­di­vo, for pa­tients with melanoma and who did not have a re­sponse when be­ing treat­ed with a PD-1.

The da­ta, which come from the first 75 pa­tients out of a to­tal of 125, show an over­all re­sponse rate (ORR) of 36%. A pri­or Phase II co­hort of 16 pa­tients, pre­sent­ed in June, showed an ORR of 37.5%. The com­plete re­sponse rate dis­closed this week was 20%.

The biotech fur­ther stat­ed that the da­ta demon­strate “sys­temic ac­tiv­i­ty, with both in­ject­ed and in un-in­ject­ed le­sion re­spond­ing, in­clud­ing in un-in­ject­ed vis­cer­al dis­ease.” Most of the re­spons­es were al­so seen in pa­tients who did not re­spond to pri­or an­ti-PD1 ther­a­py.

In a state­ment, Replimune CEO Philip Ast­ley-Sparke said the da­ta, com­bined with pre­vi­ous IGNYTE co­horts, “gives us high con­fi­dence we will be able to re­al­ize our am­bi­tion of es­tab­lish­ing a broad skin can­cer fran­chise with RP1.”

The good news has been mu­sic to in­vestors’ ears as the com­pa­ny’s share price $RE­PL has in­creased from around $18 a share on Wednes­day, when the snap­shot was re­leased, to over $24 on Fri­day.

Replimune first jumped on­to the ex­change in Ju­ly 2018 with a $100 mil­lion IPO. In Oc­to­ber, the biotech inked a $200 mil­lion loan from Her­cules Cap­i­tal over the next five years, ex­tend­ing its cash in­to 2025.

For the com­pa­ny’s oth­er ma­jor tar­gets, called RP2 and RP3, Replimune is still look­ing to go ahead with them and pur­sue a Phase II de­vel­op­ment plan, with the tar­gets aim­ing to treat pa­tients with liv­er can­cer.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Novartis’ sickle cell drug, approved in 2019 and branded as Adakveo, has failed an ongoing Phase III, according to preliminary results.

The Swiss pharma giant unveiled early data from the ongoing STAND Phase III study on Friday, saying that crizanlizumab showed no statistically significant difference between the drug at two different dose levels compared to placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises that lead to a healthcare visit over the first year since being randomized into the trial.

Merck’s blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda has been handed another indication by the FDA.

The US regulator announced on Thursday that it has approved Keytruda to serve as an adjuvant treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is its fifth indication in NSCLC and 34th indication overall.

According to a Merck release, the approval is based on data from a Phase III trial, dubbed Keynote-091, which measured disease-free survival in patients who received chemotherapy following surgery. The data from Merck displayed that Keytruda cut down on the risk of disease recurrence or death by 27% versus placebo.

J&J and Legend Biotech’s next step in turning their CAR-T therapy Carvykti into a potential megablockbuster has succeeded, the companies said Friday.

Carvykti achieved the primary endpoint — progression-free survival — in an open-label Phase III study testing the treatment in second- to fourth-line multiple myeloma patients. The CARTITUDE-4 trial, for which there aren’t any hard data yet, represents the biggest development for Carvykti’s ability to compete with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Abecma since its approval last February.