Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford spin­out Ox­ford Nanopore has raised a mon­ster round for its “scal­able” DNA and RNA se­quenc­ing tech ahead of a re­port­ed IPO fil­ing in Lon­don.

Once caught up in the Wood­ford de­ba­cle, the se­quenc­ing group has raised £195 mil­lion — $273 mil­lion — with the help of a ros­ter of new in­vestors. Temasek, Welling­ton Man­age­ment, M&G In­vest­ments and Nikon pitched in £125 mil­lion of that while ex­ist­ing in­vestors ponied up the rest.

Reuters re­port­ed re­cent­ly that the se­quenc­ing out­fit has signed up bankers for a sprint to the Lon­don ex­change in the sec­ond half of the year.

IP Group — a backer which it­self com­mit­ted £18.7 mil­lion to the round — re­ports that the com­pa­ny now has a val­u­a­tion of about $3.4 bil­lion, with its stake worth £359 mil­lion. — John Car­roll

Ac­er­a­gen ac­quires high­ly-an­tic­i­pat­ed Far­ber dis­ease treat­ment

Ac­er­a­gen is ac­quir­ing a com­pa­ny’s lead en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­py can­di­date for Far­ber dis­ease, and en­ter­ing a $35 mil­lion part­ner­ship to fund the de­vel­op­ment pro­gram in­to a po­ten­tial reg­is­tra­tional study.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced the ac­qui­si­tion of En­zy­vant’s en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­py RVT-801 for re­com­bi­nant hu­man acid ce­rami­dase de­fi­cien­cy that presents as Far­ber dis­ease. Ac­er­a­gen will al­so en­ter a fi­nanc­ing agree­ment with No­vaQue­st Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment to fund the drug’s de­vel­op­ment.

En­zy­vant will re­ceive up to $226 mil­lion, as well as tiered roy­al­ties on net sales, the com­pa­ny said in a re­lease Mon­day. In 2019, the agent was grant­ed rare pe­di­atric dis­ease and fast track des­ig­na­tions from the FDA.

There is no known cure for Far­ber’s dis­ease, which builds up harm­ful lev­els of lipids in the joints, tis­sues and cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem. It is caused by mu­ta­tions in the ASAH1 gene and caus­es a de­fi­cien­cy of acid ce­rami­dase, a nat­ur­al lyso­so­mal en­zyme. Pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment has been com­plet­ed, in­clud­ing in vi­vo proof of con­cept in a mouse mod­el of Far­ber’s dis­ease.

With the ac­qui­si­tion comes sev­er­al com­plet­ed tox­i­col­o­gy stud­ies, a quan­ti­ta­tive pa­tient re­search study and a nat­ur­al his­to­ry study in pa­tients with Far­ber’s dis­ease that high­lights the pro­gres­sion and im­pact of the con­di­tion, CEO John Tay­lor said in a state­ment.

“The Ac­er­a­gen team is de­light­ed to an­nounce the strate­gic trans­ac­tion with En­zy­vant and the re­la­tion­ship we have es­tab­lished with No­vaQue­st to con­tin­ue the de­vel­op­ment of ACG-801. This pro­gram is based on the foun­da­tion­al work of Dr. Ed Schuch­man at the Ic­ahn School of Med­i­cine at Mount Sinai, es­tab­lish­ing the po­ten­tial to ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing pathol­o­gy of Far­ber dis­ease, a ge­net­ic de­fi­cien­cy of acid ce­rami­dase,” Tay­lor said.

— Josh Sul­li­van

Sanofi is partnering up with Cellectis on their allogeneic CAR-Ts.

Cellectis struck a deal to use the French pharma’s drug alemtuzumab (Lemtrada, an MS agent) as part of its lymphodepletion regimen — used to sideline host immune cells and improve CAR-T cell expansion and persistence.

The Sanofi drug is already used in some clinical trials, and now the pharma giant is on the hook for clinical studies as they engage in negotiations over a commercial pact. — John Carroll

With his name already behind a rare disease success story in Alexion, Stephen Squinto was looking for a great story to drive him to jump back into the biotech game. He found that in a fledging non-viral gene therapy company, and now he’s got a few backers on board as well.

On Tuesday, Gennao Bio launched with a $40 million Series A co-led by OrbiMed and Logos Capital with participation by Surveyor Capital. The biotech, which is looking to use its cell-penetrating antibody platform to deliver nucleic acid “payloads” during into the nucleus, had to rush for its initial series — and had a name change along the way.

AbbVie has so far been successful in shooing away competition to its megablockbuster Humira, deploying a number of patents and settlements to keep biosimilars off the US market until 2023. But one Icelandic drugmaker doesn’t want to wait — and on Tuesday, it filed a lawsuit challenging what it called a patent “minefield.”

Alvotech has accused AbbVie of trying to “overwhelm” and “intimidate” it with “an outrageous number of patents of dubious validity,” according to court documents. The company is currently seeking approval for its Humira copycat AVT02, which AbbVie says would infringe upon 62 patents.