Take­da Ven­tures and Or­biMed have helped pump $61 mil­lion in­to a New York biotech join­ing the rush to dra­mat­i­cal­ly ex­pand the CRISPR tool kit.

One cru­cial com­po­nent in the CRISPR gene edit­ing process is a nu­cle­ase that cuts the tar­get DNA once it’s led there by a guide RNA. Cas9 is the most well known and broad­ly used among them, al­though re­searchers have been com­ing up with a va­ri­ety of al­ter­na­tives. The one that Emen­do Bio­ther­a­peu­tics will be ad­vanc­ing with its new fund­ing is dubbed OM­NI.

Their class of “op­ti­mized” en­zymes, ac­cord­ing to Emen­do, opens a new lev­el of pre­ci­sion un­at­tain­able with old­er ap­proach­es.

“For ex­am­ple, to treat dom­i­nant in­di­ca­tions, one al­lele needs to be edit­ed while leav­ing the oth­er one in­tact. Cur­rent CRISPR nu­cle­as­es are not spe­cif­ic enough to do this,” the biotech wrote on its web­site. “Dom­i­nant in­di­ca­tions are the vast ma­jor­i­ty of ge­net­ic dis­eases, high­light­ing the need for a nov­el ap­proach.”

That plat­form tech has at­tract­ed Take­da to a part­ner­ship in which Emen­do will syn­the­size OM­NI nu­cle­as­es for two undis­closed tar­gets. In re­turn, the Japan­ese phar­ma gi­ant agreed to par­tic­i­pate in this new fi­nanc­ing along­side Or­biMed Ad­vi­sors, Or­biMed Is­rael Part­ners and AnGes.

Tokyo and Os­a­ka-based AnGes was re­spon­si­ble for $50 mil­lion of the raise, up­ping its stake in Emen­do to 32%, ac­cord­ing to a fil­ing last month.

“Mak­ing Emen­do an af­fil­i­at­ed com­pa­ny of AnGes will as­sist us in the de­vel­op­ment of bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals through genome edit­ing, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to fur­ther ex­pand our­de­vel­op­ment pipeline as the fourth pil­lar of our op­er­a­tions af­ter HGF gene ther­a­py,nu­cle­ic-acid med­i­cines, and DNA vac­cines,” AnGes wrote.

Emen­do, which has an R&D op­er­a­tion in Is­rael, is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and Seat­tle Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal on its lead pro­gram se­vere con­gen­i­tal neu­trope­nia. Oth­er pro­grams in pri­ma­ry im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy, bone mar­row fail­ure, in­her­it­ed eye dis­ease and can­cer are al­so at­tached to pres­ti­gious aca­d­e­m­ic part­ners.

So­cial im­age: Take­da

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.

At Klick Health’s first Ideas Exchange conference with biotech and pharma industry insiders since before the pandemic began, it was no surprise many conversations included Covid topics. Yet while vaccines and treatments were discussed, so too were the effects on drug development, federal responses, health inequities — and what to do now and next.

George Yancopoulos, chief scientist and cofounder of Regeneron, opened the conference responding to a question from Acorda CEO Ron Cohen about the spotlight on the industry during Covid and some of the “flak” biopharma has taken in the past.