Ed­win Moses

Af­ter of­fi­cial­ly pass­ing off Abl­ynx to Sanofi in Ju­ly, Ed­win Moses took Au­gust off — the longest break the biotech CEO has had in about 20 years.

“By the end of that I was al­ready bored,” he says.

At the rec­om­men­da­tion of long­time friend and Syn­cona CEO Mar­tin Mur­phy, Moses has tak­en his first role since seal­ing the $4.8 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion deal about 10 months ago: board chair­man at Achilles Ther­a­peu­tics.

Iraj Ali

Moses is ex­pect­ed to play a steady­ing hand for the young Steve­nage, UK-based com­pa­ny — which, at 45 em­ploy­ees, is of sim­i­lar size as Abl­ynx in 2006 when he first took the reins — and sup­port Syn­cona man­ag­ing part­ner Iraj Ali as Ali moves in­to a full-time CEO po­si­tion.

“We want to be a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed biotech com­pa­ny in con­trol of com­mer­cial­iza­tion and our own des­tiny,” Ali tells me, “and that’s where the ap­point­ment of some­one like Ed­win is re­al­ly so per­fect for us be­cause he match­es the ex­pe­ri­ence and he brings the same vi­sion.”

Charles Swan­ton

Co-found­ed by Char­lie Swan­ton of the Fran­cis Crick In­sti­tute, Achilles is a play­er in the hot neoanti­gen for can­cer field, lever­ag­ing heavy se­quenc­ing to iden­ti­fy a pa­tient-spe­cif­ic set of tu­mor mu­ta­tions that it can tar­get. But un­like oth­er neoanti­gen pi­o­neers like Grit­stone On­col­o­gy, Neon Ther­a­peu­tics and BioN­Tech, Achilles is look­ing to di­rect­ly de­liv­er can­cer killing T cells rather than stim­u­lat­ing an im­mune re­sponse via a vac­cine.

By tak­ing a “tu­mor evo­lu­tion­ary ap­proach to se­lect­ing neoanti­gens” — ze­ro­ing in on a spe­cial group of neoanti­gens that’s present on every can­cer cell — Ali al­so be­lieves their cell ther­a­pies can de­liv­er a more po­tent and durable re­sponse.

“We’re look­ing to tar­get the most dif­fi­cult to treat metasta­t­ic can­cers where I think vac­cines would strug­gle,” Ali says of the ap­proach.

They are start­ing with a small tri­al in non-small cell lung can­cer ear­ly next year, with a sec­ond clin­i­cal pro­gram in melanoma to fol­low.

A re­sound­ing theme as the rapid­ly ex­pand­ing team ex­e­cutes all of this, Moses says, will be am­bi­tion.

“Iraj and his col­leagues have plen­ty of am­bi­tion but I think I can even add to that,” he says. “I think com­ing from the out­side you see what po­ten­tial is, and the po­ten­tial could be re­al­ly bold.”

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.