Take­da first shone a spot­light on Finch Ther­a­peu­tics’ hu­man-first dis­cov­ery plat­form in 2017, when the Japan­ese phar­ma paid $10 mil­lion to part­ner a pre­clin­i­cal ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis pro­gram in­spired by fe­cal trans­plan­ta­tion. While the mi­cro­bio­me ther­a­py, FIN-524, is still mak­ing its way to the clin­ic, Take­da has seen enough to com­mit to a sec­ond pro­gram tack­ling an­oth­er type of in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease.

Mark Smith

The duo will now rev up Finch’s plat­form tech again in search of a treat­ment for Crohn’s dis­ease, which Take­da will have ex­clu­sive rights to com­mer­cial­ize. Fi­nan­cial terms were not dis­closed.

De­ploy­ing ma­chine learn­ing to crawl through da­ta from in­ter­ven­tion­al mi­cro­bio­ta trans­plan­ta­tion stud­ies, Finch CEO Mark Smith aims to iden­ti­fy mean­ing­ful mi­cro­bial sig­na­tures por­tend­ing dis­ease. The re­sult is what he calls ra­tio­nal­ly-se­lect­ed mi­cro­bio­ta ther­a­pies, which con­tain cul­tured bac­te­r­i­al strains linked to pos­i­tive clin­i­cal out­comes.

That ap­proach could prove su­pe­ri­or to an­i­mal mod­els, Finch the­o­rizes. FIN-524 was their first at­tempt to val­i­date the the­o­ry — as the two oth­er can­di­dates in their pipeline, for re­cur­rent C. diff and autism, came from its oth­er dis­cov­ery plat­form. Known as full-spec­trum mi­cro­bio­ta, it rep­re­sents the foun­da­tion­al “drugs from bugs” idea of putting good bac­te­ria in a pill.

Gareth Hicks

“We’ve seen the promise of Finch’s Hu­man-First Dis­cov­ery plat­form for the de­vel­op­ment of a com­plete­ly new type of treat­ment for in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease,” said Gareth Hicks, head of gas­troen­terol­o­gy drug dis­cov­ery unit at Take­da, in a state­ment.

Hicks is in charge of one of four core ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas that Take­da is ze­ro­ing in on in the wake of the Shire ac­qui­si­tion (the oth­er three be­ing on­col­o­gy, neu­ro­science and rare dis­eases). Right now, one of the stars in the port­fo­lio is En­tyvio, an IBD drug that blocks the bind­ing of α₄β₇ in­te­grin to in­testi­nal mu­cos­al ad­dressin cell ad­he­sion mol­e­cule 1 (MAd­CAM-1), there­by ame­lio­rat­ing the in­flam­ma­to­ry ef­fect of white blood cells on gut tis­sues.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion with Finch isn’t their on­ly push in­to the nascent but fe­cund field of mi­cro­bio­me-based ther­a­peu­tics. Last Oc­to­ber Take­da put down $50 mil­lion to team up with France’s En­terome on EB8018, a small mol­e­cule de­signed to se­lec­tive­ly dis­arm vir­u­lent bac­te­ria in the gut caus­ing in­flam­ma­tion, with­out dis­rupt­ing the lo­cal mi­cro­bio­me.

One of the many inequalities the pandemic has laid bare is the gender imbalance in biomedical research. A paper examining Covid-19 research authorship wondered out loud: Where are the women?

It’s a question that echoes beyond our current times. In the biopharma world, not only are women under-represented in R&D roles (particularly at higher levels), their achievements and talents could also be undermined by stereotypes and norms of leadership styles. The problem is even more dire for women of color.

A day after Moderna and the NIH published much-anticipated data from their Phase I Covid-19 vaccine trial, attention is turning to AstraZeneca which, according to a UK report, is expected to publish its own early data tomorrow.

ITV’s Robert Peston reported that AstraZeneca will publish the Phase I data in The Lancet. 

AstraZeneca and Moderna represent the two most ambitious Covid-19 vaccine efforts, having set the quickest timelines for approval (though they were recently joined in that regard by the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership) and some of the loftiest goals in total doses. Yet there is even less known about AstraZeneca’s vaccine’s effect on humans than there was about Moderna’s before yesterday. Although, in a controversial move, Moderna released some statistics from its Phase I in May, AstraZeneca has yet to say anything about what it saw in its Phase I trial — a move consistent with the scientific convention to withhold data until it can be published in a peer-reviewed journal.