Sin­ga­pore-based drug­mak­er Aslan Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals priced its IPO to­day way un­der Wall Street’s ex­pec­ta­tions, bring­ing in a lit­tle more than half the tar­get haul it an­nounced in March.

The com­pa­ny raised $42 mil­lion in the pub­lic of­fer­ing Fri­day, a far cry from the $86 mil­lion it first set in­ten­tions for in a SEC fil­ing just six weeks pri­or. It of­fered 6 mil­lion shares at $7.03, list­ing on the Nas­daq un­der the tick­er $ASLN. Aslan’s stock dropped pret­ty im­me­di­ate­ly, sink­ing as low as 26% this morn­ing to $5.28 per share. Al­though it’s climb­ing up as the hours tick by, the stock is still trad­ing at about 18% be­low open as of press time.

Carl Firth

With a lead on­col­o­gy drug in a piv­otal study for bil­iary tract can­cer and a slate of key cat­a­lysts com­ing up in oth­er tri­als, Aslan plans to use the pro­ceeds to push for­ward its pipeline. Helmed by Carl Firth — the for­mer BD chief for As­traZeneca in Asia who owns 4.7% of the stock — Aslan has a glob­al strat­e­gy to roll out its can­cer drugs in Chi­na, the US, and Eu­rope. The lead prod­uct can­di­date is var­l­i­tinib, a pan-HER drug that is al­so in the clin­ic for gas­tric, breast and col­orec­tal can­cers.

When Michael Shpigelmacher started the project, he knew he’d have to fund it himself. Every other effort of its kind was academic, rejected as too risky by investors.

Shpigelmacher, a robotics geek and entrepeneur who had drifted into consulting for pharma, wanted to build the real-life equivalent of technology from the 1960s film Fantastic Voyage, the one where a submarine crew is shrunk to “about the size of a microbe” and sent on a mission to repair a scientist’s brain. He scanned the literature, found the lab that was working on the most advanced project — at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, it turned out — and started funding them with money from his own account, along with some seed cash from friends and family.

Merck took a big gamble when it opted to jump into the Covid-19 vaccine race late, and made an equally momentous decision to back out in late January. Now, looking to chip in on the effort, Merck reportedly agreed to team up with one of the companies that has already crossed the finish line.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is expected to announce a partnership between drugmakers Merck and Johnson & Johnson to jointly produce J&J’s recombinant protein Covid-19 vaccine that received the FDA’s emergency use authorization Saturday, the Washington Post reported.

FibroGen will likely have to delay its US rollout for roxadustat once again.

In an unexpected move, the FDA is convening its Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee to review the NDA in an advisory committee meeting. The date is yet to be confirmed.

Just a few weeks ago, SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges predicted that the roxa approval could come ahead of the PDUFA date on March 20 — effusive despite already being let down once by the FDA’s extension of its review back in December. AstraZeneca, which is partnered with FibroGen on the chronic kidney disease-related anemia drug, disclosed regulators had requested further clarifying analyses of clinical data.

CRLs. 483s. CBER, CDER and RWE. For biopharma professionals, these acronyms command attention because of the fundamental role FDA plays in drug development. Now Endpoints is doubling down on regulatory coverage, and launching a weekly report focusing on developments out of White Oak, with analysis and insight into what it all means.

Coverage will be led by our new senior editor, Zachary Brennan. He joins Endpoints from POLITICO, where he covered pharma. Prior to that he was the managing editor for Regulatory Focus, a news publication from the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.