Adding an­oth­er type of fu­el to its gene ther­a­py en­gine, Sarep­ta has signed Co­di­ak Bio­sciences as a part­ner to ex­plore re-dos­ing of its sig­na­ture pre­ci­sion med­i­cines for neu­ro­mus­cu­lar dis­or­ders.

Doug Williams

For $72.5 mil­lion in up­front cash and near-term li­cense fees plus re­search fund­ing, Co­di­ak is com­mit­ting to in­ves­ti­gate up to five tar­gets on its ex­o­some en­gi­neer­ing plat­form in the com­ing two years. Once the projects get through the IND stage, Sarep­ta can opt to take over.

In the process, Sarep­ta is al­so build­ing out its con­stel­la­tion of biotech part­ners — many around the Cam­bridge, MA area — to ce­ment its rep­u­ta­tion as the lead­ing de­vel­op­er of ge­net­ic treat­ments for dis­eases like Duchenne mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy and limb gir­dle mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy. From start­up Dyno Ther­a­peu­tics to the more es­tab­lished Se­lec­ta, it’s stack­ing up on tech­nolo­gies for the tool­box.

Co­di­ak’s spe­cial­ty is co-opt­ing ex­o­somes, the body’s nat­ur­al in­ter­cel­lu­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem, to car­ry pay­loads wher­ev­er they want it — es­sen­tial­ly putting an ad­dress on it with mol­e­c­u­lar tech­niques to achieve tar­get­ed de­liv­ery.

Doug In­gram

They al­so have a cru­cial prop­er­ty that ade­no-as­so­ci­at­ed virus­es, the pri­ma­ry vec­tors for gene de­liv­ery, don’t. Co­di­ak CEO Doug Williams calls it “im­mune-cloaked.”

“Gene ther­a­py has al­ways been one and done on­ly be­cause it has to be,” Williams tells End­points News.

But AAV can get trapped in­to ex­o­somes — some­thing re­searchers ob­served when mak­ing AAV in mam­malian cells, and Co­di­ak has al­so seen when pu­ri­fy­ing ex­o­somes from virus pro­duc­er cells. And when the AAV rides an ex­o­some in­to cells, they be­come shield­ed from neu­tral­iz­ing an­ti­bod­ies, which had been a crit­i­cal bar­ri­er to re-dos­ing.

The next steps will be to re­fine the process for slip­ping AAV in­to ex­o­somes, ren­der­ing it more ef­fi­cient. It’s as much a man­u­fac­tur­ing prob­lem as it’s an R&D ques­tion, but that’s what Co­di­ak’s siz­able man­u­fac­tur­ing group — em­ploy­ing as many staffers as the R&D unit — was built for.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion al­so cov­ers oth­er tech­nolo­gies in Sarep­ta’s ar­se­nal such as gene edit­ing and RNA, CEO Doug In­gram adds.

Less than a week after Roche joined forces with Dyno Therapeutics to develop gene therapies using artificial intelligence, its giant subsidiary Genentech is hopping on the AI bandwagon with a different player.

Genentech has inked a deal with Stanford spinout Genesis Therapeutics to harness its AI power for drug development and discovery. Genesis is getting an upfront payment and milestones, but the companies are keeping the details under wraps for now. The Burlingame, CA-based biotech also stands to earn future royalties on any approved Genentech drugs that come from the deal.

A little less than two years after Endo Pharmaceuticals’ deal to purchase Somerset Therapeutics fell through, the Irish drugmaker is returning to the well with a much bigger acquisition.

Endo has agreed to buy BioSpecifics Technologies for a whopping $658 million, the two companies announced Monday, in the culmination of a research agreement signed all the way back in 2004. Endo will purchase all of BioSpecifics’ outstanding stock for about $540 million, valuing the company at $88.50 per share — a 45% premium on the $61.02 share price at which the company closed on Friday.

Soon after Chris Nowers left Cell Medica — freshly rebranded Kuur Therapeutics — in February, the Kite Pharma alum was introduced to another cell therapy player.

The basic idea of building an off-the-shelf allogeneic platform with a CAR-NK approach was familiar to him, riding on the same wave as Takeda, J&J-backed Fate, Nkarta and others. But then there was something else that stood out: a membrane-bound TNF related apoptosis inducing ligand variant, or TRAIL variant, that’s also engineered onto the NK cell for a dual-targeted attack.

AbbVie and Roche’s Venclexta has gotten a new FDA thumbs up.

The pair announced Monday that regulators have approved the drug in combination with azacitidine or low-dose cytarabine for newly-diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia in adults who are 75 or older or those who can’t undergo intensive chemotherapy. This follows the drug’s accelerated approval in 2018 and positive data from two Phase III confirmatory trials.

From an ill-fated proposal to ban rebates for pharmacy benefit managers to an executive order demanding a “most-favored-nation price” for Medicare, if nothing else President Donald Trump has introduced Americans to a flurry of ideas to rein in pharma, an industry he once accused of “getting away with murder.” And now we’re getting the first glimpse of what a Joe Biden presidency might mean for prescription drug pricing.