Cure­Vac may have lost out on the ini­tial mR­NA race to bring a Covid-19 vac­cine to the mar­ket, but it’s still ea­ger to prove that it has what it takes to be a se­ri­ous play­er in the field.

As it up­dates in­vestors on its sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion vac­cine can­di­dates for in­fec­tious dis­eases in Q1 re­sults, the Ger­man biotech says it’s beef­ing up its on­col­o­gy pipeline.

To that end, it has struck a new col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bel­gium’s my­NEO, which boasts of a neoanti­gen dis­cov­ery and se­lec­tion plat­form, to iden­ti­fy new tar­gets for mR­NA im­munother­a­pies.

Build­ing on what it de­scribes as “re­cent tech­nol­o­gy plat­form ad­vances,” Cure­Vac said its on­col­o­gy ex­pan­sion will fea­ture a port­fo­lio of can­cer vac­cines to com­ple­ment the cur­rent work, in­clud­ing a Phase I TLR7/8/RIG-1 ag­o­nist.

On the in­fec­tious dis­ease side, the com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­ing work on new mR­NA vac­cines with part­ners at GSK. While its pre­vi­ous can­di­dates, in­clud­ing the sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Covid shot CV2CoV, lever­ages non-chem­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied mR­NA, it ex­pects to be­gin clin­i­cal pro­grams for in­fluen­za and Covid-19 based on mod­i­fied mR­NA lat­er this year. The dif­fer­ences in un­mod­i­fied and mod­i­fied mR­NA had long been a point of de­bate with­in the space.

Pierre Kem­u­la

Be­cause of the wind­ing down of its first-gen­er­a­tion Covid-19 pro­gram, Cure­Vac added, it has trans­ferred the pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty it re­served at a con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing or­ga­ni­za­tion to GSK. The phar­ma part­ner paid €32.5 mil­lion as re­im­burse­ment of pre-pay­ments and pro­duc­tion set­up ac­tiv­i­ties at the CMO.

“We have re­solved the ma­jor­i­ty of our past com­mit­ments and are now fo­cus­ing on con­trol­ling costs and ef­fec­tive­ly dri­ving mo­men­tum for key pro­grams with a strong fo­cus on our sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion mR­NA back­bone in vac­cines and on­col­o­gy as well as on man­u­fac­tur­ing,” said CFO Pierre Kem­u­la.

As Astellas continues its drive to build out its gene therapy portfolio and capabilities, a subsidiary of the Japanese pharma company has entered into a collaboration with a little-known Pittsburgh biotech.

Astellas-owned Mitobridge and Generian Pharmaceuticals announced on Wednesday that they will work together in a new deal for “undruggable” protein targets. Generian will net an undisclosed upfront payment and could get up to $180 million in milestones, should anything from its platform prove successful, as well as single-digit royalties on global net sales.

As the House-passed bill to cap the monthly price of insulin at $35 nationwide makes its way for a Senate vote soon, Sanofi announced Wednesday morning that beginning next month it will cut the monthly price of its insulins for uninsured Americans to $35, down from $99 previously.

The announcement from Sanofi, which allows the uninsured to buy one or multiple Sanofi insulins (Lantus, Insulin Glargine U-100, Toujeo, Admelog, and Apidra) at $35 for a 30-day supply effective July 1, follows House passage (232-193) of the monthly cap in March, with just 12 Republicans voting in favor of the measure.

Three months separated from a disappointing readout of its Covid-19 vaccine, Icosavax is back with what it calls positive topline data for a different VLP vaccine candidate — although investors aren’t impressed.

IVX-121, a vaccine candidate for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), appeared to generate “robust” immune responses among both young and older adults, as measured by neutralizing antibodies, and appeared generally well-tolerated, Icosavax reported.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.