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.

Bristol Myers Squibb has a new R&D partner, one to which they’re paying a pretty penny to use their discovery platform.

The pharma company is doling out $55 million upfront to Schrödinger $SDGR to work on up to five small molecules, with the potential for $2.7 billion in milestone payments. Schrödinger’s initial targets include HIF-2 alpha and SOS1/KRAS for a type of kidney cancer and KRAS-driven cancers, respectively.

Amgen is shrugging off a 14-year development alliance and the tens of millions of dollars spent to develop a new heart drug at Cytokinetics after a Phase III trial turned up weak data — leaving Cytokinetics to soldier on alone.

Omecamtiv mecarbil technically worked, meeting the primary composite endpoint in the Phase III GALACTIC-HF study. But it missed a key secondary endpoint, which analysts had been following as a key marker for success — reduction of cardiovascular (CV) death. While Cytokinetics celebrated the results, its stock tanked 43% upon the news, and analysts warned of an uncertain path ahead. Now, Amgen wants out.

Teneobio may be best known for its pact with AbbVie and Gilead, but before its big break the bispecific player had licensed its antibodies for a different use: as binders in CAR-T therapies being developed by Poseida.

Now, the biotechs are expanding their partnership, with Poseida exercising four options to deploy Teneobio’s heavy chain only domain antibodies commercially.

The commercial licensing fees remained under wraps, but Teneobio is eligible for $250 million in milestones for these CAR-Ts against undisclosed targets.