With mR­NA vac­cines in high de­mand and new RNA ther­a­peu­tics crowd­ing on­to the mar­ket, the de­mand for lipid nanopar­ti­cles has nev­er been high­er. Now, one of se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur Vivek Ra­maswamy’s Vant out­fits has scored a big deal with Take­da to de­vel­op LNP-de­liv­ered liv­er drugs.

The Japan­ese drug­mak­er will ear­mark $600 mil­lion for a li­cens­ing deal with Genevant, an LNP de­liv­ery tech out­fit, to de­vel­op nu­cle­ic acid ther­a­pies for liv­er fi­bro­sis, the com­pa­nies said Mon­day.

The part­ner­ship will laser in on “pre­vi­ous­ly in­ac­ces­si­ble” tar­gets in he­pat­ic stel­late cells us­ing Genevant’s LNP de­liv­ery sys­tem. The pact al­so stip­u­lates roy­al­ties on fu­ture sales.

Genevant, one of the com­pa­nies in Ra­maswamy’s ex­ten­sive Vant uni­verse, co­a­lesced in April 2018 around the idea of de­liv­er­ing ad­vanced RNA ther­a­pies with LNP tech­nol­o­gy sourced from Ar­bu­tus Bio­phar­ma. That tech, which Ar­bu­tus out-li­censed to Al­ny­lam for its FDA-ap­proved On­pat­tro (patisir­an), al­lows drug­mak­ers to pack­age RNA ther­a­pies with­in small lipid cap­sules that can be more eas­i­ly cir­cu­lat­ed in the blood.

In Jan­u­ary, Genevant reached a deal with Grit­stone On­col­o­gy to li­cense out its LNP tech for a suite of “self am­pli­fy­ing RNA” vac­cines for Covid-19. Grit­stone agreed to dole out $192 mil­lion in fu­ture pay­outs as part of the agree­ment.

Lipid nanopar­ti­cles have been in in­creas­ing­ly high de­mand as more and more RNA ther­a­peu­tics hit the mar­ket and as a suite of Covid-19 vac­cines con­tin­ue to notch ap­provals. Of those, both Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech and Mod­er­na use LNP to de­liv­er their vac­cines, which has put an enor­mous strain on the raw ma­te­ri­als and in­ter­me­di­ates mar­kets to keep up with de­mand.

LNPs are cru­cial for de­liv­er­ing those vac­cines be­cause they help pro­tect of­ten volatile mR­NA as it makes its way in­to hu­man cells. In re­sponse to chron­ic short­ages, drug­mak­ers are tap­ping con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ers to rapid­ly scale sup­ply.

In Feb­ru­ary, Ger­many’s BioN­Tech tapped Mer­ck KGaA to “sig­nif­i­cant­ly ac­cel­er­ate” pro­duc­tion for their LNP sup­ply agree­ment. Mer­ck KGaA said it’s han­dling con­tract work for around 50 sep­a­rate vac­cine pro­grams al­though not all of those use LNP.

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

The biotech industry has faced repeated calls to diversify its workforce — and in the last year, those calls got a lot louder. Though women account for just under half of all biotech employees around the world, they occupy very few places in C-suites, and even fewer make it to the helm.

Some companies are listening, according to a recent BIO survey which showed that this year’s companies were 2.5 times more likely to have a diversity and inclusion program compared to last year’s sample. But we still have a long way to go. Women represent just 31% of biotech executives, BIO reported. And those numbers are even more stark for women of color.

Biopharma’s resident antibody-drug conjugate expert Seagen has scored a clutch of oncology approvals in recent years, finding gold in what are known as “third-gen” ADCs. Now, another of their partnered conjugates is ready for prime time.

The FDA on Monday handed an accelerated approval to Seagen and Genmab’s Tivdak (tisotumab vedotin-tftv, or “TV”) in second-line patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer who previously progressed after chemotherapy rather than PD-(L)1 systemic therapy, the companies said in a release.

A week before the FDA is set to decide on Mirum Pharmaceuticals’ lead liver disease drug — an old Shire cast-off called maralixibat — Takeda is swooping in to secure the rights in Japan.

Maralixibat’s roots trace back to Lumena, which was snapped up by Shire for $260 million-plus back in 2014. While the candidate had failed mid-stage studies at Shire, Mirum believes better trial design and patient selection will deliver the wins it needs. The drug is currently in development for Alagille syndrome (a condition called ALGS in which bile builds up in the liver), progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (PFIC, which causes progressive liver disease) and biliary atresia (a blockage in the ducts that carry bile from the liver to the gallbladder).