Sean Parker helps create a CRISPRed cell therapy 2.0 play — and he’s got a high-profile set of leaders on the team

Sean Parker, AP

October 17, 2019 07:00 AM EDTUpdated October 18, 12:41 AM

John Carroll

Sean Parker helps create a CRISPRed cell therapy 2.0 play — and he’s got a high-profile set of leaders on the team

You can rack up one more high-profile debut effort in the wave of activity forming around cell therapy 2.0. It’s another appealing Bay Area group that’s attracted some of the top hands in the business to a multi-year effort to create a breakthrough. And they have $85 million in hand to make that first big step to the clinic.

Today it’s Ken Drazan and the team at South San Francisco-based ArsenalBio that are coming from behind the curtain for a public bow, backed by billionaire Sean Parker and a collection of investors that includes Beth Seidenberg’s new venture investment operation based in LA.
Drazan — a J&J Innovation vet with a long record of entrepreneurial endeavors — exited the stage in 2018 when his last mission ended as he stepped aside as president of Grail. It wasn’t long, though, before he was helping out with a business plan for ArsenalBio that revolved around the work of a large group of interconnected scientists supported by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunology.

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Lessons for biotech and pharma from a doctor who chased his own cure

After being struck by a rare disease as a healthy third year medical student, David Fajgenbaum began an arduous journey chasing his own cure. Amidst the hustle of this year’s JP Morgan conference, the digital trials platform Medable partnered with Endpoints Studio to share Dr. Fajgenbaum’s story with the drug development industry.

What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation between Medable CEO Dr. Michelle Longmire and Dr. Fajgenbaum, and it is full of lessons for biotech executives charged with bringing the next generation of medicines to patients.

February 24, 2020 08:04 AM ESTUpdated 08:15 AM

Jason Mast

R&D

Novartis gets a boost in blockbuster multiple sclerosis race with Roche

In the first step of what’s likely to be a long and uphill battle for the drugmaker, the FDA has accepted Novartis’s BLA submission for a new multiple sclerosis drug and given it priority review. The PDUFA date for the potential blockbuster drug is in June.

The drug, known as ofatumumab or Arzerra, has performed consistently well across late-stage trials in patients with the most common form of MS, including in head-to-head studies against Sanofi’s old blockbuster Aubagio. But, if the drug is approved, Novartis will find itself in a crosstown game of catch-up; since a 2017 approval, Roche’s Ocrevus has become the second best-selling MS drug on the market, nearly eclipsing Biogen’s Tecfidera last quarter with over a $1 billion in sales.

February 24, 2020 07:25 AM EST

Amber Tong

China

Pharma

Coronavirus outbreak threatens shortage of 150 drugs — report

American patients who suffer from conditions other than Covid-19 could feel the impact of the coronavirus due to shortage of drugs — as 150 prescription drugs are now reportedly on a list of at-risk therapies. The list spans “antibiotics, generics and some branded drugs without alternatives,” Axios reported citing sources familiar with the list. The FDA declined to comment.

Although factories in China are gradually reopening, restrictions in travel and disruptions at transit hubs are still slowing down production. An Indian company that relies on active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) from China told Bloomberg last week that it’s seeing prices of commonly used drugs jump by 40% to 70%.

ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Director/Senior Director, Business Development

Respivant Sciences

San Diego, CA

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Juergen Horn

February 24, 2020 06:57 AM ESTUpdated 07:43 AM

Natalie Grover

Startups

Venture

Animal health vet Juergen Horn makes new antibody play for pets, raking $15M in Series A haul

Zoetis forked over $85 million in 2017 to acquire Nexvet Biopharma and its pipeline of monoclonal antibodies. Juergen Horn, Nexvet’s former chief product development officer, has now secured $15 million for his own biologic company for animals: Invetx.

Buoyed by emerging advances in gene therapies for humans, scientists have started looking at harnessing the technology for animals setting up companies such as Penn-partnered Scout Bio and George Church-founded Rejuvenate Bio. But akin to Nexvet, Invetx is working on leveraging the time-tested science of monoclonal antibodies to treat chronic diseases that afflict man’s best friend.

February 24, 2020 05:47 AM EST

Amber Tong

China

Coronavirus

Deals

As coronavirus outbreak reaches 'tipping point,' GSK lends adjuvant tech to Chinese partner armed with preclinical vaccine

As the coronavirus originating out of Wuhan spreads to South Korea, Italy and Iran, stoking already intense fears of a pandemic, GlaxoSmithKline has found another pair of trusted hands to place its adjuvant system. China’s Clover Biopharmaceuticals will add the adjuvant to its preclinical, protein-based vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2.

Clover, which is based in the inland city of Chengdu, boasts of a platform dubbed Trimer-Tag that produces covalently-trimerized fusion proteins. Its candidate, COVID-19 S-Trimer, resembles the viral spike (S)-protein found in the virus.

Kathy High (file photo)

February 21, 2020 06:54 AM EST

Amber Tong

Cell/Gene Tx

People

Gene therapy pioneer Kathy High has left Spark after completing $4.3B union with Roche

Kathy High dedicated the past seven years of her life shepherding experimental gene therapies she’s developed at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia toward the market as president and head of R&D at Spark Therapeutics. Now that the biotech startup is fully absorbed into Roche — with an FDA approval, a $4.3 billion buyout and a promising hemophilia program to boast — she’s ready to move on.

Roche confirmed her departure with Endpoints News and noted “she will take some well-deserved time off and then will begin a new chapter in a sabbatical at a university.”

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February 24, 2020 07:03 AM EST

Michael Mezher

Regulatory

Drug approvals: FDA publishes dataset of CDER approvals since 1985

To provide researchers with more accurate and accessible data about historic drug approvals, the FDA on Friday released a dataset containing information about all new drugs and biologics approved by the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) dating back to 1985.

“FDA created the compilation to facilitate data accessibility, transparency, and accuracy when researchers seek information about an approved drug,” the FDA writes, adding that the compilation should accurately reflect “the state of each application at the time of initial regulatory approval.”

ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Clinical Trial Manager

Cold Genesys, Inc.

Irvine, CA

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Deborah Dunsire

February 22, 2020 12:51 PM EST

Amber Tong

Pharma

Regulatory

The fourth CGRP migraine drug is here. Time for Lundbeck to prove it's worth $2B

They may be late, but Lundbeck is now officially in the game for preventing migraine with CGRP drugs.

The FDA has OK’d eptinezumab, the prize in Lundbeck’s $2 billion acquisition of Alder. Like rival offerings from Amgen/Novartis, Eli Lilly and Teva, the antibody blocks the calcitonin gene-related peptide, which is believed to dilate blood vessels in the brain and cause pain.

It will now be sold as Vyepti. The company has yet to announce a price. Amgen and Novartis had set the wholesale acquisition cost of their pioneering Aimovig at $6,900 for a year’s supply before raising it slightly this year; Lilly and Teva had followed suit with Emgality and Ajovy.

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Tal Zaks (Moderna via YouTube)

February 19, 2020 10:01 AM ESTUpdated February 20, 05:17 AM

Jason Mast

R&D

For two decades, a new vaccine technology has been slowly approaching prime time. Now, can it stop a pandemic?

Two months before the outbreak, Moderna CMO Tal Zaks traveled from Cambridge, MA to Washington DC to meet with Anthony Fauci and the leaders of the National Institutes of Health.

For two years, Moderna had worked closely with NIH researchers to build a new kind of vaccine for MERS, one of the deadliest new viruses to emerge in the 21st century. The program was one test for a new technology designed to be faster, cheaper and more precise than the ways vaccines had been made for over a century. They had gathered evidence the technology could work in principle, and Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a longtime advocate for better epidemic preparedness, wanted to see if it, along with a couple of other approaches, could work in a worst-case scenario: A pandemic.

“[We were] trying to find a test case for how to demonstrate if our technology could rapidly prepare,” Zaks told Endpoints News.

Zaks and Fauci, of course, wouldn’t have to wait to develop a new test. By year’s end, an outbreak in China would short circuit the need for one and throw them into 24/7 work on a real-world emergency. They also weren’t the only ones with new technology who saw a chance to help in a crisis.

An ocean away, Lidia Oostvogels was still on vacation and relaxing at her mother’s house in Belgium when her Facebook started changing. It was days after Christmas and on most people’s feeds, the news that China had reported a novel virus to the World Health Organization blurred into the stream of holiday sweaters and fir trees. But on Oostvogels’s feed, full of vaccine researchers and virus experts, speculation boiled: There was a virus in China, something contained to the country, but “exotic,” “weird,” and maybe having to do with animals. Maybe a coronavirus.

Lidia Oostvogels

“I was immediately thinking like, ‘Hey, this is something that if needed, we can play a role,'” Oostvogels told Endpoints.

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Sean Parker helps create a CRISPRed cell therapy 2.0 play — and he’s got a high-profile set of leaders on the team

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Lessons for biotech and pharma from a doctor who chased his own cure

Novartis gets a boost in blockbuster multiple sclerosis race with Roche

Coronavirus outbreak threatens shortage of 150 drugs — report