Rick Klaus­ner Lyell

→ Lyell chief Rick Klaus­ner con­tin­ues to build up his net­work of com­pa­nies beaver­ing away at new cell ther­a­pies. The Glax­o­SmithK­line part­ner led a $45 mil­lion E round for Eu­re­ka Ther­a­peu­tics, which is work­ing with en­gi­neered T cells on sol­id tu­mors. Klaus­ner, a for­mer di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Can­cer In­sti­tute, al­so found­ed Juno and Grail. The fund­ing comes with a strate­gic re­search col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Eu­re­ka and Lyell.

→ Shares of Blue­print Med­i­cines $BPMC bounced high­er Tues­day morn­ing af­ter the Cam­bridge, MA-based biotech re­port­ed that their mid-stage study for avapri­tinib in pa­tients with in­do­lent sys­temic mas­to­cy­to­sis of­fered pos­i­tive da­ta. Blue­print says that at 16 weeks they record­ed a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline of 30% in pa­tients’ to­tal symp­tom score. An­drew Berens at SVB Leerink not­ed: “While we be­lieve Ay­vak­it in iSM pro­vides an­oth­er val­ue dri­ver for BPMC shares, we ac­knowl­edge the fun­da­men­tal val­u­a­tion dis­con­nec­tion from cur­rent BPMC shares amid mar­ket tur­moil.”

→ Wel­comed to the Hong Kong Stock Ex­change with open arms, In­no­Care has bagged $288 mil­lion in its IPO, Reuters re­port­ed. The biotech — which has of­fices across Bei­jing, Shang­hai, Nan­jing, Guangzhou, Prince­ton and Boston — has priced its float at the top of the range (HK$8.95), mark­ing the first ma­jor IPO to pro­ceed in Hong Kong since the stock mar­ket re­opened af­ter the Lu­nar New Year hol­i­day amid coro­n­avirus fears. Most of the new cash will go to­ward its lead drug, a BTK in­hibitor dubbed ore­labru­ti­nib; the rest will fund de­vel­op­ment of oth­er can­cer and au­toim­mune drugs.

Nearly two months after spinning out from Merck, women’s health business Organon has struck its first half-billion-dollar deal.

Organon $OGN has promised $25 million upfront and another $475 million in biobucks for worldwide rights to ebopiprant, ObsEva’s investigational treatment for preterm labor. Ebopiprant, a selective prostaglandin F2α (PGF2α) receptor antagonist, was originally licensed from Merck KGaA in 2015. The candidate works by reducing inflammation and uterine contractions.

As public and private companies stare down the reality of the Delta variant, many are now requiring that their employees or students be vaccinated against Covid-19 prior to attending school or to returning or starting a new job. Claims that such mandates are illegal or cannot be used for vaccines under emergency use authorizations have now been dismissed.

Setting the record straight, the Department of Justice on Monday called the mandates legal in a new memo, even when used for people with vaccines that remain subject to EUAs.