Although Verve Therapeutics did not come up with a gene editing technology itself, its work applying base editing in cardiovascular diseases — going from launch to first-in-human dosing in just over three years — has caught the eye of Vertex.

Vertex is handing over $25 million in cash plus a $35 million equity investment to ally itself with Verve around an in vivo gene editing program for an undisclosed liver disease.

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Amgen had hoped that its latest study matching its landmark KRAS G12C drug Lumakras with checkpoint inhibitors would open up its treatment horizons and expand its commercial potential. Instead, the combo spurred safety issues that blunted efficacy and forced the pharma giant to alter course on its treatment strategy, once again disappointing analysts who have been tracking the drug’s faltering sales and limited therapeutic reach.

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Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

One of the cool things about adding EndpointsPharma to the daily roster is that my colleagues can now dedicate time to tracking quarterly updates and tuning into calls with Big Pharma companies. Check out their dispatch from the Q2 earnings below.

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Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has vowed to leave no stone unturned in the search for new biotech deals, and the BD team is not letting him down.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Pfizer is in the final stages of acquiring Global Blood Therapeutics for $5 billion. According to the Journal report, though, Pfizer is not the only buyer at the deal table and while the pharma giant may be close to clinching it, there are no guarantees it will continue.

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Amgen CEO Bob Bradway is bellying up to the M&A table today, scooping up the newly anointed commercial biotech ChemoCentryx $CCXI and its recently approved rare disease drug for $3.7 billion out of the cash stockpile. The deal comes in at $52 a share — a hefty increase over the $24.11 close yesterday.

Bradway and the Amgen team get a drug called Tavneos (avacopan) in the deal, a complement factor C5a inhibitor OK’d to treat anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody (ANCA)-vasculitis, an autoimmune disease which can be lethal.

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Al Sandrock is narrowing the focus of Voyager Therapeutics, concentrating on CNS diseases that were the hallmark of his time leading R&D at Biogen, including an emphasis on a familial form of ALS for which his former employer is getting a speedy review at the FDA.

Less than six months into his journey as CEO at Voyager, Sandrock is focusing the preclinical pipeline on Alzheimer’s disease, GBA1 Parkinson’s disease and SOD1 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the rare form of ALS for which the FDA will decide whether to approve Biogen’s tofersen by Jan. 25, 2023.

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David Hallal’s ElevateBio is launching a new company Thursday as it looks to continue making its mark in the cell and gene therapy spaces. But Hallal is also keeping his cards close to the vest, preferring to toe the line between bombast and mystique rather than going all-in in one direction.

The new company comes out of a partnership with Boston Children’s Hospital and research from George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School. The triumvirate claims to have found a way to design better off-the-shelf cell therapies using new methods discovered in Daley’s Boston Children’s Hospital lab (Harvard is not involved in the collaboration).

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