Months af­ter se­cur­ing up to $21 mil­lion in fund­ing from the Coali­tion for Epi­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness In­no­va­tions (CEPI) for its Chikun­gun­ya vac­cine — which is be­ing prepped for a late-stage tri­al — Vi­en­na, Aus­tria-based Themis Bio­science en­tered in­to a pact with US drug­mak­er Mer­ck.

The Eu­ro­pean vac­cine de­vel­op­er formed in 2009 and a year lat­er joined forces with the In­sti­tut Pas­teur — gain­ing ex­clu­sive ac­cess to a measles virus vac­cine vec­tor tech­nol­o­gy, which now forms the back­bone of its plat­form.

Con­sid­er­ing it has been used to vac­ci­nate bil­lions of peo­ple, the at­ten­u­at­ed measles virus is one of the most ef­fec­tive and safe vac­cines avail­able, mak­ing it an at­trac­tive can­di­date vec­tor to avert in­fec­tious dis­ease.

In con­trast to oth­er ap­proach­es, Themis has de­vel­oped the tech­nol­o­gy to in­cor­po­rate mul­ti­ple large re­com­bi­nant pro­tein anti­gens in­to the vec­tor, which then acts as a de­liv­ery ve­hi­cle to trans­port the anti­gen pay­load di­rect­ly to macrophages and den­drit­ic cells. Fur­ther, since the vec­tor it­self repli­cates — there­by ex­press­ing anti­gens even af­ter im­mu­niza­tion — Themis’ vac­cine can­di­dates are en­gi­neered to con­fer long-term im­mu­ni­ty, chief Erich Tauber told End­points News.

Apart from its lead ex­per­i­men­tal Chikun­gun­ya vac­cine, Themis has a Zi­ka vac­cine and Las­sa fever in ear­ly-stage de­vel­op­ment. It al­so has a range of pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams, in­clud­ing those for res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­cy­tial virus (RSV), cy­tomegalovirus (CMV), norovirus and Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS).

The vec­tor al­so has the in­trin­sic abil­i­ty to at­tack can­cer cells, which has been demon­strat­ed in var­i­ous pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies, he added. The com­pa­ny is there­fore cap­i­tal­iz­ing on that po­ten­tial by equip­ping the vec­tor with ad­di­tion­al tu­mor-killing pay­loads to de­vel­op on­col­o­gy treat­ments. Themis’s first im­muno-on­col­o­gy vac­cine is set to en­ter the clin­ic this year.

The terms of the Mer­ck $MRK part­ner­ship are shroud­ed in mys­tery. The two will work on a “block­buster in­di­ca­tion” and the New Jer­sey-based drug man­u­fac­tur­er will grant up to $200 mil­lion in mile­stone pay­ments, in ad­di­tion to roy­al­ties. Mer­ck has al­so made an undis­closed eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment in Themis.

Mer­ck, which has been bask­ing in the suc­cess of its flag­ship check­point in­hibitor Keytru­da, caus­ing some to wor­ry it may be lean­ing too heav­i­ly on the block­buster, has sharp­ened its fo­cus on its vac­cine port­fo­lio. In May, its pneu­mo­coc­cal con­ju­gate vac­cine can­di­date aimed at top­pling Pfiz­er’s best­seller, Pre­vnar 13, cleared a mid-stage study — and is al­so be­ing eval­u­at­ed in var­i­ous Phase III tri­als. Mer­ck al­so has a part­ner­ship with mR­NA com­pa­ny Mod­er­na $MR­NA, fo­cused on per­son­al­ized can­cer vac­cines that are cus­tomized for each pa­tient.

Moncef Slaoui hasn’t started making plans for his summer vacation next year. But he offers high odds that all Americans will be able to do that in the not too distant future.

In an interview with a pair of sympathetic podcasters at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Slaoui provides an education to listeners on how any drug or vaccine can be sped through trials. And he leaves the door wide open to the notion that the leading vaccine developers can demonstrate efficacy and safety in a compelling fashion as early as October — or as late as the end of this year.

US regulators handed Roche and Genentech a big win Friday afternoon, one that has market-shaping potential for its high-priced rivals from Novartis and Biogen.

The FDA has green-lit the companies’ spinal muscular atrophy drug risdiplam, which will be marketed as Evrysdi in the US, for use in patients two months and older. It’s the first SMA drug that can be taken orally, as Biogen’s Spinraza is injected into the spine while Novartis’ Zolgensma is a gene therapy.

Biohaven just added nearly $1 billion to their balance sheet.

On Friday morning, the neuroscience biotech announced a pair of creative agreements with Royalty Pharma and the investment firm Sixth Street to bolster the commercial launch of their new migraine drug, Nurtec. Biohaven will sell a sliver of its royalties on Nurtec and 3% of the royalties on their experimental migraine drug zavegepant to Royalty Pharma as part of a larger agreeement that will pay $450 million. At the same time, the company announced they took out a $500 million loan from Sixth Street.

There’s no sign that the windfall of cash dropping biotech’s way on Wall Street is abating. Three more biopharmas priced IPOs on Thursday and Friday morning, riding a historic boom with a $364 million payoff.

London-based biotech Freeline Therapeutics took home the lion’s share of the cash with $159 million after pricing 8,823,529 shares at $18 a pop. Checkmate Pharmaceuticals, of Cambridge, MA, raised $75 million with an offer of 5 million shares at $15 — right at the midpoint of its range. And Arya Sciences Acquisition Corp III, the third in a series from Perceptive, priced 13,000,000 shares at $10 per share.