Vertex ousts longtime exec Ian Smith over unspecified code of conduct violations

January 23, 2019 04:37 PM ESTUpdated January 23, 08:34 PM

Vertex ousts longtime exec Ian Smith over unspecified code of conduct violations

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

There’s some big trouble to report at Boston-based Vertex, a bellwether company in the biotech industry.

The cystic fibrosis drug developer announced after the market closed Wednesday that they had ousted company COO and CFO Ian Smith for conduct unbecoming an executive at the company.

Ian Smith Handout photo

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BiTE® Platform and the Evolution Toward Off-The-Shelf Immuno-Oncology Approaches

Peter Kufer

Vice President & Innovator of BiTE® Technology, Amgen

Despite rapid advances in the field of immuno-oncology that have transformed the cancer treatment landscape, many cancer patients are still left behind.1,2 Not every person has access to innovative therapies designed specifically to treat his or her disease. Many currently available immuno-oncology-based approaches and chemotherapies have brought long-term benefits to some patients — but many patients still need other therapeutic options.3

President Donald Trump (left) and Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed (Alex Brandon, AP Images)

June 3, 2020 02:40 PM EDTUpdated 2 hours ago

Coronavirus

UPDATED: White House names finalists for Operation Warp Speed — with 5 expected names and one notable omission

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

A month after word first broke of the Trump Administration’s plan to rapidly accelerate the development and production of a Covid-19 vaccine, the White House has selected the five vaccine candidates they consider most likely to succeed, The New York Times reported.

Most of the names in the plan, known as Operation Warp Speed, will come as little surprise to those who have watched the last four months of vaccine developments: Moderna, which was the first vaccine to reach humans and is now the furthest along of any US effort; J&J, which has not gone into trials but received around $500 million in funding from BARDA earlier this year; the joint AstraZeneca-Oxford venture which was granted $1.2 billion from BARDA two weeks ago; Pfizer, which has been working with the mRNA biotech BioNTech; and Merck, which just entered the race and expects to put their two vaccine candidates into humans later this year.

June 4, 2020 12:30 PM EDT

Deals

Bristol-Myers is cleaning up the post-Celgene merger pipeline, and they’re sweeping out an experimental checkpoint in the process

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Back during the lead up to the $74 billion buyout of Celgene, the big biotech’s leadership did a little housecleaning with a major pact it had forged with Jounce. Out went the $2.6 billion deal and a collaboration on ICOS and PD-1.

Celgene, though, also added a $530 million deal — $50 million up front — to get the worldwide rights to JTX-8064, a drug that targets the LILRB2 receptor on macrophages.

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Process Development Scientist, Compound Management

Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Salt Lake City, UT

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June 3, 2020 08:57 AM EDT

R&D

Is a powerhouse Merck team preparing to leap past Roche — and leave Gilead and Bristol Myers behind — in the race to TIGIT domination?

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Roche caused quite a stir at ASCO with its first look at some positive — but not so impressive — data for their combination of Tecentriq with their anti-TIGIT drug tiragolumab. But some analysts believe that Merck is positioned to make a bid — soon — for the lead in the race to a second-wave combo immuno-oncology approach with its own ambitious early-stage program tied to a dominant Keytruda.

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David Meline, incoming Moderna CFO

June 4, 2020 09:04 AM EDT

People

Amgen vet David Meline finds a new CFO roost at Moderna, taking a ride on the Covid-19 tiger as departing exec cashes out with $12M

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

We found out a few weeks ago that Moderna CFO Lorence Kim isn’t waiting around to see how the biotech wunderkind makes out in its frantic race to field a messenger RNA vaccine that can quell Covid-19. And now we know who’s stepping on board to take his place in the latest move in the executive suite.

David Meline, who forged his rep during a 6-year run at Amgen, slipped out the exit right after his Q2 “retirement” party in California — presumably virtual — and started the next chapter of his career at a biotech company betting big on revolutionizing the vaccine R&D space.

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Leen Kawas, Athira CEO (Athira)

June 4, 2020 07:30 AM EDT

Venture

R&D

Can a small biotech successfully tackle an Everest climb like Alzheimer’s? Athira has $85M and some influential backers ready to give it a shot

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

There haven’t been a lot of big venture rounds for biotech companies looking to run a Phase II study in Alzheimer’s.

The field has been a disaster over the past decade. Amyloid didn’t pan out as a target — going down in a litany of Phase III failures — and is now making its last stand at Biogen. Tau is a comer, but when you look around and all you see is destruction, the idea of backing a startup trying to find complex cocktails to swing the course of this devilishly complicated memory-wasting disease would daunt the pluckiest investors.

June 4, 2020 07:30 AM EDTUpdated 07:40 AM

R&D

Pharma

GSK presents case to expand use of its lupus drug in patients with kidney disease, but the field is evolving. How long will the monopoly last?

Natalie Grover

Reporter

In 2011, GlaxoSmithKline’s Benlysta became the first biologic to win approval for lupus patients. Nine years on, the British drugmaker has unveiled detailed positive results from a study testing the drug in lupus patients with associated kidney disease — a post-marketing requirement from the initial FDA approval.

Lupus is a drug developer’s nightmare. In the last six decades, there has been just one FDA approval (Benlysta), with the field resembling a graveyard in recent years with a string of failures including UCB and Biogen’s late-stage flop, as well as defeats in Xencor and Sanofi’s programs. One of the main reasons the success has eluded researchers is because lupus, akin to cancer, is not just one disease — it really is a disease of many diseases, noted Al Roy, executive director of Lupus Clinical Investigators Network, an initiative of New York-based Lupus Research Alliance that claims it is the world’s leading private funder of lupus research, in an interview.

ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Senior Drug Discovery Scientist

New York, NY

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June 4, 2020 06:59 AM EDTUpdated 09:24 AM

Coronavirus

Covid-19 roundup: Moderna readies to enter PhIII in July, AstraZeneca not far behind; EU ready to negotiate vaccine access with $2.7B fund

Amber Tong

Editor

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

Moderna may soon add another first to the Covid-19 vaccine race.

In March, the mRNA biotech was the first company to put a Covid-19 vaccine into humans. Next month, they may become the first company to put their vaccine into the large, late-stage trials that are needed to prove whether the vaccine is effective.

In an interview with JAMA editor Howard Bauchner, NIAID chief Anthony Fauci said that a 30,000-person, Phase III trial for Moderna’s vaccine could start in July. The news comes a week after Moderna began a Phase II study that will enroll several hundred people.

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June 4, 2020 06:34 AM EDT

Deals

José Baselga finds promise in new class of RNA-modifying cancer targets, locking in 3 preclinical programs with $55M

Amber Tong

Editor

Having dived early into some of the RNA breakthroughs of the last decades — betting on Moderna’s mRNA tech and teaming up with Silence on the siRNA front — AstraZeneca is jumping into a new arena: going after proteins that modify RNA.

Their partner of choice is Accent Therapeutics, which is receiving $55 million in upfront payment to steer a selected preclinical program through to the end of Phase I. After AstraZeneca takes over, the Lexington, MA-based startup has the option to co-develop and co-commercialize in the US — and collect up to $1.1 billion in milestones in the long run. The deal also covers two other potential drug candidates.

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