→ The Sofinno­va Telethon Fund has found a new gene ther­a­py up­start to back. The fund se­lect­ed Gene­spire for its port­fo­lio, tap­ping a biotech in­spired by the work of Lui­gi Nal­di­ni, a leg­endary sci­en­tist in the field. The biotech was found­ed last month by Nal­di­ni, pro­fes­sor Alessio Can­tore, The Telethon Foun­da­tion and San Raf­faele Hos­pi­tal. It is a spin-off of SR-Tiget. Graziano Seghezzi, man­ag­ing part­ner of Paris-based Sofinno­va Part­ners, plays a big role in al­lo­cat­ing the funds. This is Sofinno­va’s third in­vest­ment in 6 months, to­tal­ing €25 mil­lion.

→ Near­ly two months af­ter first fil­ing for an $86 mil­lion IPO, ORIC Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has priced at on­ly a slight­ly low­er num­ber: $75 mil­lion, with 5 mil­lion shares go­ing be­tween $14 and $16. That the eco­nom­ic freeze has on­ly nom­i­nal­ly shift­ed ORIC’s pub­lic of­fer­ing re­flects in­vestors’ con­tin­ued faith in biotech de­spite — and in some cas­es be­cause of — the pan­dem­ic.  The South San Fran­cis­co-based can­cer biotech will use the bulk of the pro­ceeds from the IPO to ad­vance its lead drug, ORIC-101, in prostate can­cer and oth­er sol­id tu­mors.

→ A week af­ter sign­ing a deal with long­time ri­val Al­ny­lam, Dicer­na is los­ing its CMO. Ralf Rosskamp, who came to Dicer­na from Sum­mit Ther­a­peu­tics in 2017, will be re­tir­ing, the com­pa­ny an­nounced in an SEC fil­ing. The long­time biotech ex­ec­u­tive will re­main at the com­pa­ny un­til a re­place­ment is found and con­sult un­til June 2021.

It was great getting back to a live ESMO conference/webinar in Paris followed by a live pop-up event for the Endpoints 11 in Boston. We’re staying on the road in October with our return for a live/streaming EUBIO22 in London.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Nooman Haque and I are once again jumping back into the thick of it with a slate of virtual and live events on October 12. I’ll get the ball rolling with a virtual fireside chat with Novo Nordisk R&D chief Marcus Schindler, covering their pipeline plans and BD work.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel made clear on the last quarterly call that “now is not the time to slow down.” On Thursday, he made a bit more room in the cockpit.

The company unveiled a new executive role on Thursday, promoting former chief technical operations and quality officer Juan Andres to president of strategic partnerships and enterprise expansion, and poaching a former Novartis exec to take his place.

Gilead is mounting its counterfeit drug lawsuit, naming two “kingpins” and a complex network of conspirators who allegedly sold imitation bottles of its HIV meds, some of which ended up in US pharmacies.

The pharma giant on Wednesday provided an update on what it called a “large-scale, sophisticated counterfeiting conspiracy,” accusing two new defendants of “leading and orchestrating” a scheme to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in illegitimate drugs posing as meds such as Biktarvy and Descovy.

Sarepta Therapeutics has filed the data needed for an FDA accelerated approval, which would be the biotech’s fourth if granted by the agency.

The biotech has yet to complete confirmatory trials for those first three conditional nods. The filing for its fourth Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment, disclosed Thursday, is not a surprise. Sarepta said in late-July it would do so after releasing positive results for the Roche-partnered gene therapy.