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

Known in the in­dus­try as the Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO, Novotech is now lead CRO ser­vices provider for the grow­ing num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al biotechs se­lect­ing the re­gion for their stud­ies.

Re­flect­ing this Asia-Pa­cif­ic growth, Novotech staff num­bers are up 20% since De­cem­ber 2018 to 600 in-house clin­i­cal re­search peo­ple across a full range of ser­vices, across the re­gion.

Novotech’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties have been rec­og­nized by an­a­lysts like Frost & Sul­li­van, most re­cent­ly with the pres­ti­gious Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO Biotech of the year award for best prac­tices in clin­i­cal re­search for biotechs for the fifth year. See oth­er awards here.

Fresh off the high of its Nas­daq IPO de­but, and the low of com­par­isons to Cymabay — whose NASH drug re­cent­ly stum­bled — Gen­fit on Mon­day un­veiled an up to $228 mil­lion deal with transpa­cif­ic biotech Terns Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to de­vel­op its flag­ship ex­per­i­men­tal liv­er drug — elafi­bra­nor — in Greater Chi­na.

The deal comes more than a week af­ter Gen­fit $GN­FT is­sued a fiery de­fense of its dual PPAR ag­o­nist elafi­bra­nor, when com­peti­tor Cymabay’s PPARδ ag­o­nist, se­ladel­par, fiz­zled in a snap­shot of da­ta from an on­go­ing mid-stage tri­al. The main goal at the end of 12 weeks was for se­ladel­par to in­duce a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in liv­er fat con­tent, but da­ta showed that pa­tients on the place­bo ac­tu­al­ly per­formed bet­ter.

The NASH par­ty is over at No­var­tis-backed Cona­tus. And this time they’re turn­ing off the lights.

More than 2 years af­ter No­var­tis sur­prised the biotech in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty with its $50 mil­lion up­front and promise of R&D sup­port to part­ner with the lit­tle biotech on NASH — ig­nit­ing a light­ning strike for the share price — Cona­tus $CNAT is back with the lat­est bit­ter tale to tell about em­ri­c­as­an, which once in­spired con­fi­dence at the phar­ma gi­ant.

Mike Grey doesn’t have any time to waste. Hav­ing re­gained con­trol of two liv­er dis­ease drugs from Shire and po­si­tioned them for piv­otal stud­ies — five years af­ter first hand­ing them off in a deal to sell Lu­me­na, where he was CEO — Grey is steer­ing Mirum straight in­to an IPO with a $86 mil­lion ask.

Not that Mirum has spent much of its $120 mil­lion Se­ries A cash since launch­ing last No­vem­ber. Ac­cord­ing to the S-1, the Cal­i­forn­ian biotech has burned through $23.3 mil­lion as of March, but ex­pects ex­pens­es to pick up once their clin­i­cal work gath­ers steam.

Ear­li­er in the week we learned that Sanofi was bring­ing out the bud­get ax to trim 466 R&D jobs in Eu­rope, re­tool­ing its ap­proach to car­dio as re­search chief John Reed beefed up their work in can­cer and gene ther­a­pies. And we’re end­ing the week with news that the phar­ma gi­ant has al­so been qui­et­ly re­duc­ing staff in the US, tar­get­ing hun­dreds of jobs as the com­pa­ny push­es vol­un­tary buy­outs with a fo­cus on R&D sup­port ser­vices.

→ Alex­ion $ALXN has scored a speedy re­view for Ul­tomiris for pa­tients with atyp­i­cal he­molyt­ic ure­mic syn­drome (aHUS) af­ter post­ing pos­i­tive da­ta from a piv­otal study in Jan­u­ary. The drug is the rare dis­ease com­pa­ny’s shot at pro­tect­ing its block­buster blood dis­or­der fran­chise that is cur­rent­ly cen­tered around its flag­ship drug, Soliris, which is a com­ple­ment in­hibitor typ­i­cal­ly ad­min­is­tered every two weeks. Ul­tomiris has a sim­i­lar mech­a­nism of ac­tion but re­quires less-fre­quent dos­ing — every eight weeks. The de­ci­sion date has been set to Oc­to­ber 19. Late last year, Ul­tomiris se­cured ap­proval for noc­tur­nal he­mo­glo­bin­uria (PNH) pa­tients.

A month af­ter roil­ing in­vestors with what skep­tics dis­missed as cher­ry pick­ing of its de­pres­sion da­ta, Min­er­va is back with a clean slate of da­ta from its Phase IIb in­som­nia tri­al.

In a de­tailed up­date, the Waltham, MA-based biotech said sel­torex­ant (MIN-202) hit both the pri­ma­ry and sev­er­al sec­ondary end­points, ef­fec­tive­ly im­prov­ing sleep in­duc­tion and pro­long­ing sleep du­ra­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors made a point to note that the ef­fects were con­sis­tent across the adult and el­der­ly pop­u­la­tions, with the lat­ter more prone to the sleep dis­or­der.

Shares of Krys­tal Biotech took off this morn­ing $KRYS af­ter the lit­tle biotech re­port­ed promis­ing re­sults from its gene ther­a­py to treat a rare skin dis­ease called epi­der­mol­y­sis bul­losa.

Fo­cus­ing on an up­date with 4 new pa­tients, re­searchers spot­light­ed the suc­cess of KB103 in clos­ing some stub­born wounds. Krys­tal says that of 4 re­cur­ring and 2 chron­ic skin wounds treat­ed with the gene ther­a­py, the KB103 group saw the clo­sure of 5. The 6th — a chron­ic wound, de­fined as a wound that had re­mained open for more than 12 weeks — was par­tial­ly closed. That brings the to­tal so far to 8 treat­ed wounds, with 7 clo­sures.