So­sei Hep­tares is team­ing up with a big-name part­ner: Al­pha­bet’s Ver­i­ly.

No fi­nan­cials were dis­closed, but the pair will aim to use Ver­i­ly’s im­mune pro­fil­ing and So­sei Hep­tares’ GPCR drug de­sign ca­pa­bil­i­ties to de­vel­op a va­ri­ety of new ther­a­peu­tics. The col­lab­o­ra­tion will fo­cus on GPCR drugs in the im­munol­o­gy, gas­troen­terol­o­gy and im­muno-on­col­o­gy spaces, as well as oth­er dis­or­ders with im­muno­pro­tec­tive or im­munopath­o­gen­ic mech­a­nisms, the com­pa­nies said.

“Im­munol­o­gy is a key area of fo­cus for So­sei Hep­tares and this new col­lab­o­ra­tion brings to­geth­er two world-class tech­nolo­gies and teams with the skills and ex­per­tise to de­fine key GPCRs as tar­gets for the dis­cov­ery of new med­i­cines that could have sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on pa­tients with im­mune-based dis­eases world­wide,” So­sei VP for drug dis­cov­ery Matt Barnes said in a state­ment. — Max Gel­man

Ob­sE­va un­veils new PhI­II da­ta for en­dometrio­sis pain 

Just a month af­ter women’s health biotech Ob­sE­va brought on a new CFO, the com­pa­ny has some Phase III tri­al da­ta for pain as­so­ci­at­ed with en­dometrio­sis.

The tri­al was for lin­zagolix, an oral GnRH an­tag­o­nist can­di­date for women with mod­er­ate-to-se­vere en­dometrio­sis-as­so­ci­at­ed pain, al­so known as EAP. Two dos­es — 200 mg once-dai­ly with add-back ther­a­py (ABT) and 75 mg dai­ly with­out back ther­a­py — were test­ed.

The 200 mg dose, ac­cord­ing to Ob­sE­va, met the study’s co-pri­ma­ry ef­fi­ca­cy ob­jec­tives: re­duc­ing dys­men­or­rhea (DYS) and non-men­stru­al pelvic pain (NMPP) at 3 months. At 6 months of treat­ment at 200 mg, there were list­ed im­prove­ments in five sec­ondary end­points: dys­men­or­rhea, non-men­stru­al pelvic pain, dyschezia, over­all pelvic pain, and abil­i­ty to do dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties.

The 75 mg dose did show a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion ver­sus place­bo in DYS at 3 months. Al­though it showed im­prove­ment in NMPP at 3 months, it did not reach sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance ver­sus place­bo.

Ob­sE­va CMO Eliz­a­beth Gar­ner praised the re­sults, say­ing in a state­ment that the biotech plans to com­plete its Phase III pro­gram for EAP, and said that it would ex­plore a non-ABT op­tion for that in­di­ca­tion. — Paul Schloess­er

Gilead recently decided to pull two indications for its cancer drug Zydelig — in relapsed follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (FL) and relapsed small lymphocytic leukemia (SLL) — after failing to complete the confirmatory trials required as part of the accelerated approvals from 2014.

“As the treatment landscape for FL and SLL has evolved, enrollment into the confirmatory study has been an ongoing challenge,” Gilead said in a statement, noting it formally notified the FDA of its decision to voluntarily withdraw these indications.

Shanghai biotech Yingli Pharma wants to bring its small molecule drug research global — and a new pact with MD Anderson will help it get there.

Yingli and MD Anderson have inked a 5-year collaboration deal that will put its cancer candidates — some of which have already generated data in China — into trials in the US. The lead program is linperlisib, a PI3Kδ inhibitor that’s in a Phase III trial in follicular lymphoma, according to Yingli’s website. In the US, MD Anderson will work with Yingli to put the candidate in a Phase II trial for peripheral T cell lymphoma (PTCL), an uncommon and aggressive type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.