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.

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.”

Amid an industrywide review of cancer drugs with accelerated approval, Bristol Myers Squibb had to make the tough call last month to yank an approval for leading I/O drug Opdivo after flopping a confirmatory study. Now, a second Bristol Myers drug is on the chopping block.

Bristol Myers has pulled aging HDAC inhibitor Istodax’s indication in peripheral T cell lymphoma after a Phase III confirmatory study for the drug flopped on its progression-free survival endpoint, the drugmaker said Monday.

The Federal Trade Commission on Friday withdrew its remaining case against AbbVie after the Supreme Court declined to review a lower court’s ruling.

The punt by SCOTUS means that while the Illinois pharma company illegally blocked patients’ access to lower-cost alternatives to its testosterone drug AndroGel, the FTC will no longer be able to return about $500 million directly to AndroGel consumers.

BioVision has supplied Abcam with research tools since 1999, and now the two are making it official as part of a merger unveiled Monday.

Abcam will buyout BioVision as part of a $340 million acquisition deal to bring aboard the supplier’s biochemical and cell-based assays for biological research, as well as recombinant proteins, antibodies and enzymes.

The deal will give Abcam control of BioVision’s portfolio and allow for both the expansion of research existing areas of focus such as oncology, neuroscience and epigenetics and preparation to expand into new products. As a part of the deal, Abcam will develop and supply products and services to NKY, the previous owner of BioVision and receive support for ongoing development and commercialization of in vitro diagnostic products.