→ 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.

At the end of January, the European Medicines Agency officially launched its new clinical trials info system (CTIS), although the migration to the new platform has only really just begun, and sponsors have until the end of January 2023 before all initial trial applications must be submitted through CTIS.

Overall, 56 clinical trial applications have been submitted in CTIS during the first 3 months since the launch of the system on Jan. 31, according to new data posted by the EMA. By comparison, about 4,000 new trials are authorized each year across Europe.

As concerns related to uptake and distribution continue to linger, Switzerland is among the first countries that plans to destroy hundreds of thousands of expired and unused Covid-19 vaccine doses.

The European country said it plans to destroy more than 600,000 doses of Moderna’s Spikevax Covid-19 vaccine as the doses have reached their expiration date.

However, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that he’s in the process of throwing 30 million doses in the garbage, exclaiming, “We have a big demand problem.”

The EU is reportedly working toward a centralized procurement deal for smallpox vaccines to tackle the rising number of cases of monkeypox, according to sources who spoke to the Financial Times.

Andrea Ammon, director of Europe’s CDC, told the FT that the European Commission is “definitely looking at what can be done centrally” and central procurement is “one of the options that are looked at but of course countries are also” looking into bilateral avenues.

More than 500 stakeholders sent comments to the FTC on whether the commission should look further into pharma middlemen, known as PBMs, with many of the commenters calling for more federal oversight.

Similar to the critical open comment period in a deadlocked FTC session last February, pharmacies and pharmacy groups are continuing to call out the lack of transparency among the top 3 PBMs, which control about 80% of the market.