Months af­ter bury­ing its third and fi­nal clin­i­cal pro­gram, Vi­cal has turned to a re­verse merg­er with Brick­ell Biotech to put an end to its mis­ery.

Robert Brown Brick­ell

The new com­pa­ny — in which Vi­cal in­vestors will re­tain a 40% own­er­ship — will op­er­ate un­der Brick­ell’s name and agen­da, fo­cus­ing on se­ri­ous der­ma­to­log­ic dis­or­ders like hy­per­hidro­sis, cu­ta­neous T-cell lym­phoma and pso­ri­a­sis. Fol­low­ing the all-stock trans­ac­tion, No­vaQue­st Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment has pledged $25 mil­lion to fund near-term R&D, adding to the $35 mil­lion in cash re­serve that Vi­cal brings.

For Vi­cal in­vestors, CEO Vi­jay Samant says, the deal gives them a stake in a po­ten­tial best-in-class ther­a­py for ax­il­lary hy­per­hidro­sis or ex­ces­sive sweat­ing. A top­i­cal soft an­ti­cholin­er­gic, sof­piro­ni­um bro­mide is now on the cusp of a Phase III af­ter Brick­ell’s de­vel­op­ment part­ner Kak­en re­port­ed pos­i­tive late-stage re­sults in Japan.

Brick­ell CEO Robert Brown, who jumped from Eli Lil­ly late last year, said to ex­pect topline da­ta for sof­piro­ni­um bro­mide in Q4 2020 while his team fur­ther de­vel­ops the pipeline of skin dis­ease treat­ments.

Vi­jay Samant Vi­cal

Samant him­self hasn’t had a great track record pre­dict­ing suc­cess for drug de­vel­op­ment pro­grams — con­sid­er­ing he’s axed three clin­i­cal-stage pro­grams in less than two years, ac­com­pa­nied with a cou­ple of rounds of lay­offs — but he added that Brick­ell’s ex­ec team brings ex­pe­ri­ence launch­ing drugs for oth­er com­pa­nies.

The dis­as­trous streak be­gan last Jan­u­ary with a Phase III cy­tomegalovirus vac­cine part­nered with Astel­las, which had al­ready failed a her­pes study in 2016. Then Vi­cal scrapped an­oth­er Phase II bi­va­lent vac­cine can­di­date for her­pes sim­plex virus type 2, turn­ing to an an­ti­fun­gal li­censed from Astel­las, on­ly to give up this Feb­ru­ary and go through a fi­nal re­struc­tur­ing.

Dur­ing this time, the biotech saw val­ue steadi­ly leak from its stock, hov­er­ing just above $1 (in con­trast with a high of $14.8 in 2015). Shares $VI­CL lift­ed 31.3% for a fi­nal ral­ly pre-mar­ket, though that on­ly trans­lat­ed to $1.51 in dol­lar terms.

The val­u­a­tion for Vi­cal was $40 mil­lion, a pre­mi­um over its 30-day vol­ume weight­ed av­er­age share price as well as its mar­ket cap of $26.25 mil­lion.

Brick­ell, which was val­ued at $60 mil­lion in the deal, has yet to pick out a new tick­er on the Nas­daq.

Im­age: Shut­ter­stock

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”

As the ink dries on CSL’s $11.7 billion Vifor buyout, the company posted a dip in profits, due in part to a drop in plasma donations amid the pandemic.

However, CEO Paul Perreault assured investors and analysts on the full-year call that the team has left “no stone unturned” when assessing options to grow plasma volumes. The chief executive also spelled out positive results for the company’s monoclonal antibody garadacimab in hereditary angioedema (HAE), though he isn’t revealing the exact numbers just yet.