Mer­ck’s im­muno-on­col­o­gy su­per­star Nicholas Hain­ing has been ap­point­ed CSO at Ar­se­nal­Bio, which is work­ing on an ap­proach to pro­gram­ma­ble cell ther­a­pies.

The ad­di­tion of a high-pro­file ap­point­ment like Hain­ing, who co-found­ed the com­pa­ny but has been serv­ing as VP of dis­cov­ery on­col­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy at Mer­ck Re­search Lab­o­ra­to­ries and al­so did work on pe­di­atric hema­tol­ogy/on­col­o­gy at the famed Dana-Far­ber Can­cer In­sti­tute, comes as Ar­se­nal­Bio may set its sights on an IPO in the near fu­ture.

Nicholas Hain­ing

Hain­ing re­places Genen­tech vet Jane Gro­gan, who in April moved over to be Graphite Bio’s CSO af­ter serv­ing as Ar­se­nal’s CSO since the biotech’s launch in Oc­to­ber 2019.

“Ar­se­nal­Bio has laid out a vi­sion and a roadmap for en­gi­neer­ing the fate and func­tion of T cells to help cure can­cer,” Hain­ing said in a state­ment. “It will be a priv­i­lege to be part of the mis­sion of trans­form­ing the best sci­ence in­to ef­fec­tive ther­a­pies for pa­tients who need them most.”

The new se­nior lead­er­ship fits right in with Ar­se­nal’s re­cent­ly an­nounced col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bris­tol My­ers Squibb. Back in Jan­u­ary, Ar­se­nal teamed up with BMS to find, de­vel­op and com­mer­cial­ize tar­get­ed T cell ther­a­pies for sol­id tu­mors. Ar­se­nal will han­dle the ear­ly dis­cov­ery work in the deal while Bris­tol will pay $70 mil­lion up­front with an op­tion to li­cense pre­clin­i­cal can­di­dates and bring them to mar­ket.

Ar­se­nal has sharp­ened its fo­cus in the near­ly two years since its in­cep­tion, with new work on us­ing a “stack” of bi­ol­o­gy com­po­si­tions to cre­ate de­sign­er T cells that can be ad­min­is­tered at low­er dos­es, bet­ter tar­get sol­id tu­mors and pre­vent the se­ri­ous side ef­fects com­mon in oth­er im­munother­a­pies. The biotech says its can­di­dates may be eas­i­er to man­u­fac­ture too, giv­en the fact they’re not ad­min­is­tered through in­ac­ti­vat­ed virus­es.

Ken Drazan

Led by Ken Drazan, a J&J vet and for­mer pres­i­dent of Grail, the South San Fran­cis­co-based biotech has a for­mi­da­ble group of in­vestors, in­clud­ing the bil­lion­aire and for­mer Nap­ster head Sean Park­er, who sits on Ar­se­nal’s board of di­rec­tors, and his Park­er In­sti­tute for Can­cer Im­munother­a­py, along with oth­ers like West­lake Vil­lage BioPart­ners, Klein­er Perkins, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co Foun­da­tion In­vest­ment Com­pa­ny, Eu­clid­ean Cap­i­tal, and Os­age Uni­ver­si­ty Part­ners.

“Ar­se­nal­Bio al­lows us to rewrite vast stretch­es of code to give T cells dra­mat­ic new func­tions — that means they can be made to be more ef­fec­tive at killing can­cer and a broad spec­trum of oth­er dis­eases,” Park­er said in a state­ment. “It’s al­so very re­ward­ing to see Ar­se­nal­Bio born from the deep col­lab­o­ra­tion of PI­CI in­ves­ti­ga­tors — who worked to­geth­er across re­search cen­ters, hos­pi­tals and uni­ver­si­ties on the sci­ence be­hind these tech­nolo­gies.”

The European Medicines Agency on Friday rejected Kyowa Kirin’s Parkinson’s disease drug Nouryant (istradefylline), which the US FDA approved in 2019 under the brand name Nourianz.

EMA said it considered that the results of the clinical studies used to support the application “were inconsistent and did not satisfactorily show that Nouryant was effective at reducing the ‘off’ time. Only four out of the eight studies showed a reduction in ‘off’ time, and the effect did not increase with an increased dose of Nouryant.”