A com­pa­ny work­ing to­ward the field of bac­te­rio­phages, de­vel­op­ing ther­a­pies that use bac­te­ria-killing virus­es, just pulled in a sig­nif­i­cant amount of new cap­i­tal.

Adap­tive Phage Ther­a­peu­tics closed a $40.75 mil­lion Se­ries B, the Gaithers­burg, MD-based biotech an­nounced Tues­day morn­ing. The fi­nanc­ing was led by Deer­field Man­age­ment with par­tic­i­pa­tion from the Mayo Clin­ic, which had been a pre­vi­ous in­vestor.

Bac­te­rio­phages had long been an emp­ty area of re­search in the US, but the field has gar­nered more in­ter­est re­cent­ly as an­tibi­ot­ic-re­sis­tant bac­te­ria con­tin­ue to grow in promi­nence. Some of the ear­li­est sci­en­tists to the­o­rize about their use have thought that find­ing the right phages can lead to bet­ter treat­ments for in­fec­tions and ill­ness­es.

The mol­e­cules are virus­es, and work the same way hu­man-in­fect­ing virus­es do — by en­ter­ing host cells and repli­cat­ing. But in this case the host cells are bac­te­ria. The ul­ti­mate goal of bac­te­rio­phage ther­a­py is to use phages to en­ter bac­te­r­i­al cells and cause them to burst, there­by cur­ing pa­tients.

It’s long proved a dif­fi­cult task, name­ly due to the lack of re­search and fund­ing which is fail­ing to help prove these the­o­ries. Many of the pa­tients who have re­ceived ex­per­i­men­tal bac­te­rio­phage ther­a­pies have al­so been ex­treme­ly sick, with the treat­ments used as last-re­sort op­tions.

Fur­ther­more, there’s the need to iden­ti­fy specif­i­cal­ly which bac­te­r­i­al strain is in­fect­ing pa­tients, and match­ing the right bac­te­rio­phage to the pathogen. Mis­match­ing the two not on­ly won’t help the sick pa­tients, but might end up caus­ing fur­ther harm as well.

For Adap­tive Phage, the funds will go to­ward the ther­a­pies that come out of its pro­pri­etary plat­form. The com­pa­ny is de­vel­op­ing a bank of phages, say­ing it’s col­lect­ed hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent virus­es so far that pro­vide broad cov­er­age against six high-pri­or­i­ty, drug-re­sis­tant bac­te­ria.

Adap­tive Phage’s two lead pro­grams are to treat pros­thet­ic joint in­fec­tion and di­a­bet­ic foot os­teomyelitis, and they al­so plan to use some funds to ad­vance a sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty test to more quick­ly iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial phage ther­a­pies. The com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy was orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped by the Pen­ta­gon’s biode­fense pro­gram, and Adap­tive Phage ac­quired it in 2017.

Deer­field is no stranger to this area ei­ther, as it bought out Melin­ta in March 2020 af­ter the an­tibi­otics com­pa­ny filed for Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy. The deal turned over con­trol to Deer­field in ex­change for the $140 mil­lion of se­nior debt it holds in the com­pa­ny.

So­cial: Greg Mer­ril, Adap­tive Phage Ther­a­peu­tics CEO (Adap­tive Phage)

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.

After controversially spinning out its talc liabilities and filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to settle 38,000 lawsuits, Johnson & Johnson is now changing up the formula for its baby powder products.

J&J is beginning the transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio, the pharma giant announced on Thursday — just months after a federal judge ruled in favor of its “Texas two-step” bankruptcy to settle allegations that its talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. An appeals court has since agreed to revisit that case.