The pace of in­no­va­tion at the Dana-Far­ber Can­cer In­sti­tute in re­cent years has seen a wave of star­tups launch with IP or lead­er­ship sourced from the non­prof­it’s ranks. Now, look­ing for its own re­turns on that suc­cess, Dana-Far­ber has launched a new ven­ture fund to in­vest in those fledg­ling busi­ness­es.

On Thurs­day, Dana-Far­ber un­veiled Bin­ney Street Cap­i­tal — its first-ever ven­ture fund. Roche and Ver­i­ly vet­er­an Lu­ba Green­wood has been tapped to lead the fund, which was named af­ter the lo­ca­tion of the in­sti­tute’s Boston site.

“We’re re­al­ly ex­cit­ed that we can re­al­ly cat­alyze the mis­sion, ba­si­cal­ly, that the Dana Far­ber has,” Green­wood said. “This fund is all to sup­port our mis­sion to find cures for can­cer, so we’re very pas­sion­ate about that,” she added lat­er.

In­vest­ments will be made in eight to 10 star­tups with ties to Dana-Far­ber over the next three years, rang­ing from $250,000 to $2 mil­lion. While the main fo­cus will be ther­a­peu­tics, Dana-Far­ber will al­so con­sid­er nov­el di­ag­nos­tics, dig­i­tal health and ser­vices com­pa­nies.

“We must com­mit all the re­sources we can to re­duce the bur­den of can­cer, in the clin­ic and in our lab­o­ra­to­ries,” Dana-Far­ber pres­i­dent and CEO Lau­rie Glim­ch­er said in a state­ment.

To be con­sid­ered, star­tups must have been ei­ther been cre­at­ed with in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty from Dana-Far­ber or co-found­ed by one of the in­sti­tute’s in­ves­ti­ga­tors. Dana-Far­ber says its re­search and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty has helped launch more than 11 star­tups in the last three years alone.

“The sci­ence has to be dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed, it has to be tru­ly break-through…” Green­wood said. “So ba­si­cal­ly the best of the best in on­col­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy.”

Since 2013, Se­ries A in­vest­ments in on­col­o­gy have out­paced all oth­er in­di­ca­tions in deals and dol­lars, ac­cord­ing to Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank’s 2020 an­nu­al re­port. That is, un­til 2019, when on­col­o­gy was out­raised by plat­form com­pa­nies. The can­cer space still at­tract­ed $835 mil­lion in Se­ries A cash, though — hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars more than the amounts raised in neu­rol­o­gy and or­phan/rare dis­eases, ac­cord­ing to SVB.

Back in Oc­to­ber, MD An­der­son launched the Can­cer Fo­cus Fund in con­junc­tion with The Fo­cus Fund. They start­ed off with more than $50 mil­lion in ini­tial cap­i­tal to ad­vance in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al can­cer ther­a­pies from late pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment through Phase I and Phase Ib/II clin­i­cal tri­als.

“With this new Fund, Dana-Far­ber can in­vest in start-up com­pa­nies and lever­age our rights to par­tic­i­pate in sub­se­quent fi­nanc­ing rounds,” said Les­ley Solomon, Dana-Far­ber’s chief in­no­va­tion of­fi­cer. “Sup­port­ing in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies that pro­vide new treat­ments and cures for can­cer will ben­e­fit patents all over the world. In ad­di­tion, the Fund will pro­vide in­vest­ment re­turns to sup­port on­go­ing dis­cov­ery at the In­sti­tute.”

Four years ago, when Arena CEO Amit Munshi cut its ties to a troubled weight drug and doubled down on the pipeline, a cannabinoid receptor 2 agonist figured prominently in the biotech’s future. On Tuesday evening, however, Munshi’s high hopes for the drug took a nasty hit after it failed a Phase IIb study for patients with irritable bowel syndrome pain.

Put through a randomized pace with 273 patients, researchers said it flat failed the primary endpoint among the large group with abdominal pain. But they quickly went on to highlight subgroup data, always a tricky and controversial ploy, where they spotlighted a positive p value for patients with moderate to severe pain who received the high dose of the drug — one of 3 provided in the study.

Merck took a big gamble when it opted to jump into the Covid-19 vaccine race late, and made an equally momentous decision to back out in late January. Now, looking to chip in on the effort, Merck reportedly agreed to team up with one of the companies that has already crossed the finish line.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is expected to announce a partnership between drugmakers Merck and Johnson & Johnson to jointly produce J&J’s recombinant protein Covid-19 vaccine that received the FDA’s emergency use authorization Saturday, the Washington Post reported.

FibroGen will likely have to delay its US rollout for roxadustat once again.

In an unexpected move, the FDA is convening its Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee to review the NDA in an advisory committee meeting. The date is yet to be confirmed.

Just a few weeks ago, SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges predicted that the roxa approval could come ahead of the PDUFA date on March 20 — effusive despite already being let down once by the FDA’s extension of its review back in December. AstraZeneca, which is partnered with FibroGen on the chronic kidney disease-related anemia drug, disclosed regulators had requested further clarifying analyses of clinical data.

CRLs. 483s. CBER, CDER and RWE. For biopharma professionals, these acronyms command attention because of the fundamental role FDA plays in drug development. Now Endpoints is doubling down on regulatory coverage, and launching a weekly report focusing on developments out of White Oak, with analysis and insight into what it all means.

Coverage will be led by our new senior editor, Zachary Brennan. He joins Endpoints from POLITICO, where he covered pharma. Prior to that he was the managing editor for Regulatory Focus, a news publication from the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.