Roivant joins forces with Ko­re­a's iN­tRON Bio to fight su­per­bugs; Evotec inks deal to lever­age AI to de­vel­op drugs

→ An­tibi­ot­ic re­sis­tance is a prob­lem of epi­dem­ic pro­por­tions that should ar­guably en­tice a swarm of R&D dol­lars, but these drugs com­mand rel­a­tive­ly cheap prices and don’t last as long as, say, can­cer drugs, which has in­cen­tivized Big Phar­ma to fo­cus their at­ten­tion else­where. How­ev­er, a hand­ful of small and big names are keep­ing the R&D en­gine hot. Vivek Ra­maswamy’s Roivant Sci­ences on Mon­day an­nounced it was tak­ing a punt on Ko­re­an biotech iN­tRON Bio, with a $667.5 mil­lion li­cens­ing agree­ment for SAL200, an ex­per­i­men­tal bi­o­log­ic for in­fec­tious dis­eases caused by an­tibi­ot­ic-re­sis­tant staphy­lo­coc­ci. Roivant plans to ini­ti­ate a Phase II tri­al test­ing the drug next year.

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