Cel­gene-part­nered biotech In­hi­brx has had a busy 2019 so far. The La Jol­la, Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny kicked off an ear­ly-stage on­col­o­gy study, part­nered with blue­bird bio, signed a pact with Italy’s Chiesi Group and se­cured a $40 mil­lion ven­ture cap­i­tal in­jec­tion. On Mon­day, it laid the ground­work for a rough­ly $75 mil­lion IPO.

In­hi­brx is de­vel­op­ing a pletho­ra of bi­o­log­ics — it has three on­col­o­gy pro­grams in hu­man clin­i­cal tri­als, a rare dis­ease pro­gram, for which it ex­pects to ini­ti­ate a hu­man study in the third quar­ter of 2019, as well as two pre­clin­i­cal drugs.

Its lead ex­per­i­men­tal drug tar­gets death re­cep­tor 5, or DR5, and is de­signed to treat mul­ti­ple tu­mor types, in­clud­ing dif­fi­cult-to-treat gas­troin­testi­nal tu­mors and mesothe­lioma both as a monother­a­py and in com­bi­na­tion with chemother­a­py. It is cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed in an ear­ly stage tri­al in pa­tients with sol­id tu­mors in­clud­ing sar­co­mas, and the read­out of that study is ex­pect­ed in the sec­ond half of this year.

Glob­al rights to In­hi­brx’s drug, IN­BRX-103, tar­get­ing CD47 — which pro­tects tu­mor cells from be­ing en­gulfed by macrophages — have been li­censed to Cel­gene $CELG. Mean­while, it has en­tered in­to an op­tion agree­ment with Chiesi for de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights out­side of North Amer­i­ca for IN­BRX-101 — which is be­ing de­vel­oped for the rare res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease Al­pha-1 an­tit­rypsin (AAT) de­fi­cien­cy.

Now, In­hi­brx is look­ing to list on the Nas­daq un­der the sym­bol “$IN­BX” and raise $74.75 mil­lion in the IPO. In a sep­a­rate pri­vate place­ment con­cur­rent with the of­fer­ing, Chiesi is buy­ing $10 mil­lion worth of In­hi­brx shares, ac­cord­ing to In­hi­brx’s fil­ing.

Last month, In­hi­brx raised $40 mil­lion from Viking Glob­al In­vestors — al­to­geth­er the com­pa­ny has so far raised $205 mil­lion since its in­cep­tion. Oth­er in­vestors in the biotech in­clude RA Cap­i­tal, Lil­ly Asia Ven­tures, Ar­row­Mark Part­ners, WuXi Bi­o­log­ics and Alexan­dria.

Im­age: Fer­gu­son Pape Bald­win Ar­chi­tects (FP­BA)

After making it through a long, painful haul to get past a CRL and on to an FDA approval last summer, little Chiasma has found a buyer.

Amryt $AMYT, a company known for its appetite for acquiring expensive drugs for rare diseases at bargain prices, snagged Chiasma and its acromegaly drug Mycapssa (octreotide) capsules in an all-stock deal — with an exchange of 0.396 shares of Amryt for every share of Chiasma.

Droves of House Democrats in Washington and members of the European Parliament have now glommed onto a major push by India and South Africa at the WTO to abolish all IP around Covid-19 vaccines.

At first blush, waiving this IP sounds like an easy win: More Covid-19 vaccines made locally for more people means more lives saved. Simple enough, especially as low-income countries have received just a tiny fraction of the world’s vaccine allotment so far.