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

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.

At Klick Health’s first Ideas Exchange conference with biotech and pharma industry insiders since before the pandemic began, it was no surprise many conversations included Covid topics. Yet while vaccines and treatments were discussed, so too were the effects on drug development, federal responses, health inequities — and what to do now and next.

George Yancopoulos, chief scientist and cofounder of Regeneron, opened the conference responding to a question from Acorda CEO Ron Cohen about the spotlight on the industry during Covid and some of the “flak” biopharma has taken in the past.