Unum $UM­RX is work­ing its way through a sur­vival plan of sorts.

Af­ter get­ting hit with a trio of FDA holds in its brief pub­lic his­to­ry and trig­ger­ing its sec­ond piv­ot to a new lead drug pro­gram while lay­ing off 60% of the staff, the trou­bled pen­ny stock biotech Unum Ther­a­peu­tics has hatched new plans to se­cure fi­nan­cial back­ing while lin­ing up a go-for­ward strat­e­gy for the com­pa­ny.

First, Lin­coln Park Cap­i­tal Fund has agreed to buy up to $25 mil­lion of the long-suf­fer­ing stock, as Unum di­rects. And the ex­ec­u­tive team — led by CEO Chuck Wil­son — has put every­thing on the ta­ble for con­sid­er­a­tion: a sale, ac­qui­si­tion, merg­er, li­cens­ing deal, you name it. The AC­TR707 pro­gram, mean­while, is be­ing for­mal­ly wrapped up — their sec­ond failed lead pro­gram.

Chuck Wil­son

“We re­cent­ly an­nounced the con­clu­sion of our Phase 1 AC­TR707 pro­grams and re­struc­tur­ing to pri­or­i­tize our ca­pa­bil­i­ties and re­sources to­wards ad­vanc­ing our pre­clin­i­cal pro­gram, BOXR1030, and BOXR plat­form aimed at dis­cov­er­ing nov­el ‘bolt-on’ trans­genes to help T cells sur­vive longer and per­form bet­ter in the sol­id tu­mor mi­croen­vi­ron­ment,” said Wil­son in a pre­pared state­ment. “While tak­ing steps in­ter­nal­ly to ad­vance BOXR1030 and the BOXR plat­form giv­en the broad po­ten­tial we see to im­prove cell ther­a­pies in sol­id tu­mors, we are al­so tak­ing steps to eval­u­ate ex­ter­nal op­por­tu­ni­ties as well and in this con­text, and with align­ment from our Board of Di­rec­tors, we are al­so ac­tive­ly seek­ing strate­gic al­ter­na­tives to max­i­mize share­hold­er val­ue, in­clud­ing a sale or merg­er of the Com­pa­ny at this time.”

Wed­bush’s David Nieren­garten says he’s en­cour­aged to see the com­pa­ny’s shift in­to sur­vival mode.

While UM­RX has se­cured a stock pur­chase agree­ment for up to $25M of its com­mon stock over a 36-month pe­ri­od with Lin­coln Park Cap­i­tal Fund, the com­pa­ny’s share price has most­ly trad­ed be­low $1 since mid-No­vem­ber and mean­ing­ful da­ta read­outs are out of most in­vestors’ time win­dows.

Laden­burg Thal­mann has been brought in to ad­vise the biotech.

A day before Thanksgiving, J&J’s Janssen has a new cut of Phase III Spravato data to be grateful for.

The pharma giant announced on Wednesday that its nasal spray, also known as esketamine, beat extended-release quetiapine, previously sold by AstraZeneca as Seroquel XR, in treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Of 676 adults, a significantly higher number of patients on Spravato were able to achieve remission and avoid relapse after 32 weeks, according to J&J.

Almost all of the drug industry’s biggest advertisers cut their spending on Twitter to zero or near-zero over the last two weeks amid worries about impersonation of their brands by pranksters and the future of the social media company.

Among 18 of the biggest pharmaceutical advertisers in the US market, 12 cut their Twitter ad spending to nothing for the week beginning Nov. 14, according to Pathmatics, which tracks data on prescription drug ad spending as well as general corporate advertising. The list of drugmakers cutting spending to zero includes Merck, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and others.

Japanese regulators on Tuesday signed off on Shionogi’s homegrown antiviral for Covid-19, known as Xocova (ensitrelvir), making it the first approval under Japan’s emergency regulatory approval system.

The emergency approval, following a back-and-forth with regulators since last February, is based on a safety profile with more than 2,000 patients who have accessed the pill, and clinical symptomatic efficacy for five typical Omicron-related symptoms (primary endpoint) and antiviral efficacy (key secondary endpoint) in patients with mild to moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection, regardless of risk factors or vaccination status, and during the Omicron-dominant phase of the pandemic.

MIT scientists have developed a tool that they say can insert large gene sequences where they want in the genome.

In a paper published Thursday in Nature Biotechnology, MIT fellows Omar Abudayyeh, Jonathan Gootenberg and colleagues detail a technology they call PASTE, which they say can potentially be used to insert long strands of DNA and treat genetic diseases caused by many different mutations, such as cystic fibrosis and Leber congenital amaurosis, a rare eye disorder that causes blindness.