Lanny Sun, Full-Life Technologies CEO

With ops span­ning Bel­gium and Chi­na, Full-Life inks $245M buy­out to beef up ra­dio­phar­ma pipeline

From the day they in­cor­po­rat­ed Full-Life Tech­nolo­gies just over a year ago, Lan­ny Sun and his co-founders knew they want­ed to in-li­cense and ac­quire promis­ing ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pro­grams that would fit right in­to the sup­ply chain and lo­gis­tics net­work they’re build­ing.

They’ve now found the tar­get. Full-Life has put to­geth­er a $245 mil­lion deal to buy out Fo­cus-X Ther­a­peu­tics, a tiny start­up work­ing out of New Jer­sey.

As Sun told it, the main draw of the deal is a pair of lead pro­grams that Fo­cus-X brings to the ta­ble: a pep­tide tar­get­ing PS­MA (prostate spe­cif­ic mem­brane anti­gen) for metasta­t­ic cas­tra­tion re­sis­tant prostate can­cer; and an­oth­er hit­ting NTSR-1 (neu­rotensin re­cep­tor type 1) for pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

“We’ve got a great busi­ness de­vel­op­ment team” led by CFO Julie Wu, he added, “and their en­tire job is to en­sure that we meet with low-pro­file peo­ple who are do­ing great sci­ence.”

While both pro­grams from Fo­cus-X are still pre­clin­i­cal, just like the rest of Full-Life’s pipeline, they are rel­a­tive­ly more ad­vanced. Work­ing with in­ves­ti­ga­tors in Chi­na, Fo­cus-X has an imag­ing study for the PS­MA pro­gram un­der­way in Chi­na.

Hong-hoi Ting

Sun ex­pects to start clin­i­cal tri­als for those can­di­dates in 2023, with six more pro­grams to come from Fo­cus-X.

The ven­ture in­vestor and biotech en­tre­pre­neur said he be­came in­ter­est­ed in ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals as he watched the as­cent of com­pa­nies like Ad­vanced Ac­cel­er­a­tor Ap­pli­ca­tions and En­do­cyte. The idea of us­ing nu­clear pow­er — guid­ed specif­i­cal­ly to tu­mors by binders that hit can­cer-spe­cif­ic pro­teins — is “re­fresh­ing.” And the clin­i­cal da­ta have been “game chang­ing.”

Nicholas Wong

“I love the sim­plic­i­ty of the modal­i­ty,” he said.

Gor­dian Ven­tures, where he’s a part­ner and chief in­vest­ment of­fi­cer, helped launch the com­pa­ny and Cheng­wei Cap­i­tal pro­vid­ed the $10 mil­lion seed round. Se­quoia Chi­na and a slate of oth­er Chi­nese in­vestors in­fused $37 mil­lion more ear­li­er this year.

Ravi Chari

Af­ter bring­ing in­dus­try vet­er­an Hong-hoi Ting and Nicholas Wong on board as co-founders, Sun round­ed out the team with Wu as CFO and Philippe van Put as gen­er­al man­ag­er in Eu­rope. CSO Ravi Chari is an ex­pert in an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates, a space that Sun be­lieves that ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals can one day draw par­al­lels to.

High-pro­file in­vest­ments from No­var­tis, Bay­er and a num­ber of VC shops that have backed oth­er star­tups clear­ly share the ex­cite­ment. The biggest pain point, ac­cord­ing to Sun, lies in sup­ply and lo­gis­tics, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing with some­thing with such a short shelf life.

De­pend­ing on which source you con­sult, he not­ed, the cur­rent sup­ply-de­mand ra­tio for ra­dioiso­topes is some­where be­tween one to 50 or one to 100. And even when a drug­mak­er se­cures the sup­ply, it must ef­fi­cient­ly get the ac­tini­um to a clin­i­cal site — and one day, com­mer­cial sites — with­in 9.9 days, which is the half-life of ac­tini­um.

“So just con­stant op­er­a­tional bur­den, right, or op­er­a­tional needs of pur­chase and sup­ply, and pur­chase and sup­ply. As you can imag­ine, once you get to Phase II, Phase III or com­mer­cial, I mean, you’re look­ing at hope­ful­ly, hun­dreds of sites that you’re do­ing this every six to 10 days,” he said.

Full-Life is head­quar­tered in Shang­hai, where the crew han­dles re­search as well as ad­min­is­tra­tive, fi­nance and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment func­tions. But the plan is to pro­duce ra­dioiso­topes and make ra­di­oli­gand ther­a­pies out of them in Bel­gium, where it cur­rent­ly has around 15 full-timers, and is build­ing a pro­duc­tion and lo­gis­tics cen­ter there.

“If you look at ra­dioiso­tope pro­duc­tion, I mean, Bel­gium is re­al­ly a pow­er­house,” Sun said, point­ing to the con­gre­ga­tion of mul­ti­ple top pro­duc­ers and a whole ecosys­tem of ear­ly-stage dis­cov­ery and clin­i­cal trans­la­tion.

The goal is to be mak­ing ac­tini­um in-house around 2024 to 2025, even if Full-Life will main­tain some re­la­tion­ship with ven­dors, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to oth­er types of ra­dioiso­topes.

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Roger Perlmutter, Eikon Therapeutics CEO

Roger Perl­mut­ter builds Eikon's pipeline with deal-mak­ing flur­ry, rais­ing $106M more

Eikon Therapeutics announced three business development deals on Thursday, effectively dropping in a pipeline of cancer drugs alongside more than $100 million in fresh funding.

The Hayward, CA-based company has become one of biotech’s richest startups since its 2019 founding, having raised nearly $775 million. It’s developing a massive, automated research approach built around Nobel Prize-winning microscope science to peer inside cells and watch proteins in action. After its Series B last year, PitchBook reported a $3.02 billion valuation. And while CEO Roger Perlmutter declined to comment on that figure, he said its first tranche of nearly $106 million in Series C funding is a “meaningful step-up to our Series B valuation.”

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Peter van de Sande, Synaffix CEO

Lon­za shells out $107M cash to snap up Synaf­fix and its ADC plat­form

After lining up a string of partnerships over the years, Dutch antibody-drug conjugate specialist Synaffix has found a new home: Lonza, the contract development and manufacturing giant.

Lonza is paying about $107 million (€100 million) in cash to acquire Synaffix, with up to $64 million (€60 million) in “additional performance-based consideration” on the table. Synaffix’s ADC tech platform will now become part of Lonza’s offering for biopharma clients, lending its bioconjugate technologies to not just ADCs but also targeted gene therapy, immune cell engagers and other applications.

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Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment calls mem­ber states to ac­tion on an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance

Members of the European Parliament have called on EU countries to develop national action plans against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), calling it a top-three priority health threat.

Parliament on Thursday announced recommendations for the fight against AMR, including national action plans that must be updated at least every two years, an EU-level database tracking AMR and antimicrobial use and increased partnership between the pharma industry, patient groups and academia.

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Roche plans to di­vest from lega­cy Genen­tech man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia

Roche is planning to make some changes to its subsidiary’s manufacturing network in California.

The Swiss pharma announced Wednesday that it plans to divest from Genentech’s manufacturing facility in Vacaville, CA, around 58 miles northeast of San Francisco. According to a statement from Roche, the move is part of a “broader strategy” to bring its manufacturing capabilities in line with its future pipeline. Roche is starting the process of finding a buyer for the site but has not named any candidates yet.

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Who's con­fi­dent­ly in­vest­ing in biotech star­tups dur­ing these tense days? We've got some an­swers

We’ve got a changeup to our event schedule in Boston next week, where we’ll be doing a mix of live/streaming events at our base at The Seaport Hotel as part of a two-day lineup of webinars, virtual firesides and a cocktail hour Q&A with a veteran of the biotech financing scene.

The 9:30-10:30 am ET live slot on Tuesday, June 6, will now feature a panel conversation on the current state of affairs for VC investing in biotech, focusing on what startups are getting cash — and how. Alaa Halawa, head of US ventures at Mubadala, is confirmed, along with Brian Goodman at MPM and Geoff von Maltzahn, a general partner at Moderna-buoyed Flagship. I have a couple of other invites out and will let you know how that plays out.

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The Modulo Bio team with CEO Michael Horowitz (fourth from right in semicircle)

Ex­clu­sive: With $8M, neu­ro start­up Mod­u­lo Bio emerges to test small mol­e­cules for ALS, de­men­tia in CEO’s per­son­al mis­sion

Embarking on a personal mission after his best friend’s mother was diagnosed with a mutation-driven case of frontotemporal dementia, Michael Horowitz has pulled together $8 million in venture funding at Modulo Bio to create small molecules for neurodegenerative diseases.

The San Diego and Bay Area biotech will select its lead development candidate and some backup options within six months and then raise a Series A to investigate therapeutics for C9orf72 mutation-driven cases of ALS and frontotemporal dementia, Horowitz told Endpoints News.

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Albert Bourla, Pfizer CEO (Michel Euler/AP Images, Pool)

FDA ap­proves Pfiz­er’s RSV shot for old­er adults, tee­ing up a com­pet­i­tive $17B vac­cine mar­ket

The FDA approved Pfizer’s RSV vaccine called Abrysvo for older adults on Wednesday, placing another Big Pharma onto the commercial stage ahead of the next RSV season.

Pfizer’s approval comes weeks after GSK won approval for its rival shot, Arexvy. Those two vaccines are both approved for use in adults 60 years and older and will be reviewed by a CDC panel in June before they’re expected to commercially launch this fall. Wall Street analysts see RSV as the next multibillion-dollar vaccine market, with Jefferies analysts recently forecasting the RSV market will grow to $17 billion over the next decade.

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Richard Pazdur, FDA's OCE director (Flatiron Health via YouTube)

FDA's can­cer chief weighs in on com­mon chemo short­ages — re­port

Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence, attributes the current shortage of two cancer drugs to drug companies that haven’t invested in building out their production capacity.

In an interview with The Cancer Letter, a weekly cancer publication, Pazdur said that the current shortages of cisplatin and carboplatin, a pair of drugs used to treat a wide range of cancer patients, are the result of two problems: manufacturers not investing in enhancing production capacity, and drug companies being dependent on one supplier of raw ingredients. The cisplatin shortage followed an inspection that revealed quality issues at a manufacturing facility, which then led to the shutdown of production. This led to a surge in carboplatin demand, creating a secondary shortage.

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