Bill Haney con­tin­ues to build Drag­on­fly Ther­a­peu­tics one deal at a time. And now he’s bank­ing more cash as he grows the com­pa­ny in­to an I/O play­er to reck­on with.

Tyler Jacks

Cel­gene is hand­ing over $24 mil­lion to bag the world­wide li­cens­ing rights on a pair of hema­tol­ogy ther­a­pies, pay­ing $12 mil­lion apiece just weeks af­ter the big biotech agreed to dou­ble down on their al­liance with the Cam­bridge, MA-based start­up and ex­pand the work with 4 new tar­gets.

The pact al­so comes with a pack­age of mile­stones.

David Raulet

Al­so al­lied with Mer­ck, Drag­on­fly’s busi­ness is built on TriN­KETs (Tri-spe­cif­ic, NK cell En­gager Ther­a­pies), link­ing nat­ur­al killer cells to the pro­teins found on the sur­face of can­cer cells. And that kind of ap­proach, they be­lieve, can cre­ate a po­tent next-gen im­munother­a­py ap­proach — po­ten­tial­ly a big deal for a com­pa­ny like Mer­ck or Cel­gene. 

Giv­en some busy trav­el plans for the CEO, who’s wrap­ping up a time­ly doc­u­men­tary on No­bel Prize win­ning sci­en­tist Jim Al­li­son, I pitched him some ques­tions via email last night.

JC: In prac­ti­cal terms, what does the buy-in do for Drag­on­fly?

BH: Three things. It is an­oth­er valu­able step in con­firm­ing our TriN­KET plat­form, be­cause Cel­gene clear­ly has a great deal of in­for­ma­tion about our Trin­kets tar­get­ing these first two in­di­ca­tions – through a set of cyno stud­ies. It con­firms our speed – as these drug can­di­dates have been hand­ed over less than 18 months af­ter our part­ner­ship was first an­nounced. Fi­nal­ly, it gives us more cap­i­tal – and in com­bi­na­tion with the oth­er deals re­cent­ly an­nounced, has built us a pret­ty for­mi­da­ble cap­i­tal po­si­tion, with­out sell­ing any shares.

JC: What can you tell me about the tar­gets here? 

BH: Both tar­gets are heme tar­gets – in keep­ing with Cel­gene’s for­mi­da­ble po­si­tion in heme in­di­ca­tions – but it is al­so im­por­tant that hav­ing seen all the da­ta from our joint pro­grams over the past 16 months – Cel­gene’s re­cent­ly an­nounced ex­pan­sion of our agree­ment broad­ened their in­ter­est to fo­cus on sol­id can­cer tar­gets as well – some­thing the Mer­ck agree­ment we have al­so fo­cused on.

JC: Any more part­ner­ship talks in the works right now?

BH: Yes. We are in ac­tive dis­cus­sions with a num­ber of part­ners both to de­vel­op Trin­KETS against new tar­gets, and to part­ner the drug can­di­dates we are rapid­ly ad­vanc­ing for IND fil­ing Q2 next year.

The com­pa­ny counts three key founders: 

Tyler Jacks, an MIT pro­fes­sor, HH­MI in­ves­ti­ga­tor and di­rec­tor of the David H. Koch In­sti­tute for In­te­gra­tive Can­cer Re­search; Berke­ley’s David Raulet, whose back­ground as an ex­pert in NK cells and tu­mor im­munol­o­gy helped spot­light some of the big ideas Drag­on­fly is pur­su­ing, clear­ly played a big role with this deal; and Haney, an en­tre­pre­neur and film­mak­er.

Im­age: Bill Haney. DRAG­ON­FLY

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

The National Institutes of Health has again declined to use so-called “march-in” rights to lower the price of Astellas and Pfizer’s prostate cancer drug Xtandi despite being invented at UCLA with grants from the US Army and NIH.

“Given the remaining patent life and the lengthy administrative process involved for a march-in proceeding, NIH does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug,” NIH told prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs and Clare Love, in a letter shared with Endpoints News. The institutes’ analyses found Xtandi “to be widely available to the public,” an indication that there was not a pressing need for the US to act.