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)

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.

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.

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.

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 weeks 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.

→ 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.