
T3 Pharmaceuticals completes second financing round; Moderna, Harvard Medical School to tackle immunological diseases
→ University of Basel, Switzerland spinout T3 Pharmaceuticals has raised 12 million CHF at the close of its second financing round. Current investors were joined by Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund and Reference Capital SA. The round will help propel the cancer-focused company’s lead product, T3P-Y058-739, into clinical testing, which is expected to begin in the middle of 2020.
In addition, the company welcomed aboard Claire Barton as CMO after having been with the company as a consultant for the past 18 months. Her previous stints include roles at GlaxoWellcome, Lilly and Roche.
→ A few weeks after mRNA unicorn Moderna touted early-stage human data, the company is teaming up with Ulrich von Andrian at Harvard Medical School (HMS) in a multi-year research collaboration to tackle immunological diseases. In addition to that $2.45 million, Moderna will also provide $1.2 million in funding to HMS to establish an initiative called the Alliance for RNA Therapies for the Modulation of the Immune System (ARTiMIS), which will make use of Moderna’s mRNA and nanoparticle delivery technology.
→ NICE has given the final no for Novartis‘ migraine prevention drug Aimovig — based on a lack of significant data. The watchdog was unwilling to retract its original decision and said in a statement that the trials excluded individuals that had shown no benefit from prior treatments — the ones who would be in most need of the treatment and the “most clinically important subgroup.” In addition, the agency said the long-term data provided failed to show sustained benefit, only included people with episodic migraines and did not specify how many previous treatments they had failed before taking the drug. Finally, NICE pointed out concerns that “for the chronic migraine subgroup, there as no direct comparison with the current standard of treatment, botulinum toxin type A (Botox), so its superiority is uncertain.”