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.”

Boehringer Ingelheim uncorked some positive results suggesting that Spevigo can help prevent flare-ups in patients with a severe form of psoriasis, months after the drug was approved to treat existing flares.

Spevigo, an IL-36R antibody also known as spesolimab, met its primary and a key secondary endpoint in the Phase IIb EFFISAYIL 2 trial in patients with generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP), Boehringer announced on Monday. While the company is keeping the hard numbers under wraps until later this year, it said in a news release that it anticipates sharing the results with regulators.

AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi won an appeals court win on Monday, as the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found that the companies cannot be forced to provide 340B-discounted drugs purchased by hospitals from an unlimited number of community and specialty pharmacies.

“Legal duties do not spring from silence,” the decision says as the court makes clear that the federal government’s interpretation of the “supposed requirement” that the 340B program compels drugmakers to supply their discounted drugs to an unlimited number of contract pharmacies is not correct, noting:

A US appeals court has ruled against Johnson & Johnson’s use of bankruptcy to deal with mounting talc lawsuits, deciding that doing so would “create a legal blind spot.”

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a previous bankruptcy court decision on Monday, calling for the dismissal of a Chapter 11 filing by J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management.

Faced with more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging its talc-based products caused cancer, J&J spun its talc liabilities into a separate company called LTL Management back in October 2021 and filed for bankruptcy, a controversial move colloquially referred to as a “Texas two-step” bankruptcy. Claimants argued that the strategy is a misuse of the US bankruptcy code — and on Monday, a panel of judges agreed.

The FDA has found a brand new director of the Digital Health Center of Excellence in Troy Tazbaz, a former senior vice president at Oracle.

According to Tazbaz’s LinkedIn, he took a five-month break after leaving an 11-year career at Oracle before joining the FDA in January. Stat News first reported the hire. Tazbaz also said on his LinkedIn that he biked all the way from Chesapeake Bay to the San Francisco Bay over 58 days during his career break.

Eric Lander is returning to the Broad Institute, the prestigious genomic research center he helped launch and led for 16 years, a year after he resigned from the White House’s top science position following accusations of demeaning and disrespectful conduct toward subordinates.

Todd Golub, who succeeded Lander as Broad’s director, announced Lander’s return, early next month, on the institute’s intranet. Lander will also resume the tenured faculty positions he left behind at MIT and Harvard, Golub added.