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Whats up, everybody. Damian right here with an evidence of the newest development in biotech financing, a giant thought in oncology, and Novo Nordisk’s plans to make Wegovy out of date.
The necessity-to-know this morning
- Comfortable Leap Yr Day! An additional day in February permits for padding of the month’s biotech PIPE totals. Avidity Biosciences: $400 million.
- Life sciences funding agency Abingworth is offering Gilead Sciences with $210 million to fund clinical trials of Gilead’s drug Trodelvy in non-small cell lung most cancers. In trade, Abingworth will obtain funds for potential expanded approvals and royalties on gross sales.
- Pfizer is about to make a massive push in most cancers. Will buyers hear? In an interview, CEO Albert Bourla was insistent that buyers are lacking the potential of Pfizer’s acquisition of Seagen.
The place’d all these PIPEs come from?
As soon as upon a time, if a publicly traded biotech firm wanted cash, it will promote shares on the open market, counting on the knowledge of the group to find out its valuation. However increasingly more biotech companies are embracing a brand new approach of elevating money, scoring sweeter offers in trade for a bit of insider info.
As STAT’s Adam Feuerstein experiences, we live within the golden age of the PIPE, brief for personal funding in public fairness. Simply this week, 5 biotech firms have raised almost $1 billion mixed in PIPE transactions. There have been 30 such offers to date in 2024, totaling greater than $4 billion in worth.
The attract of PIPEs — and the rationale they’re inflicting some consternation — is the fabric, personal info. The funds that take part in these offers be taught issues most people doesn’t know. Legally, it’s not insider buying and selling, as every PIPE comes with restrictions that stop buyers from instantly buying and selling the shares they purchase. However it’s patently unfair to anybody not invited to take part, and that’s not precisely sitting properly throughout Wall Avenue.
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The subsequent act for a biotech rainmaker
Jean Cui’s final firm, the oncology-focused Turning Level Therapeutics, obtained bought to Bristol Myers Squibb for $4 billion. That helped make her subsequent enterprise, targeted on most cancers medicine that may counteract tumors’ evolution, a straightforward promote to buyers.
As STAT’s Matthew Herper experiences, the agency is named BlossomHill Therapeutics, and it simply raised $100 million from a syndicate together with Colt Ventures, Cormorant Asset Administration, and OrbiMed. The concept, Cui stated, is to interrupt the mildew of drug design, constructing new molecules from scratch that might be much less vulnerable to most cancers cells creating resistance. Amongst her targets is a competitor to AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso, one of many best-selling most cancers drugs available on the market.
The attract, buyers stated, rests on Cui’s monitor report. At Turning Level, she was key to the invention of the focused remedy that ultimately received FDA approval and drew Bristol’s curiosity. Earlier in her profession, at Pfizer, she did cornerstone work on two accepted most cancers medicines. “It’s really all about her,” stated Cormorant’s Bihua Chen.
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Cell remedy for the mind
Simply as engineered cells have led to dramatic advantages for sure cancers, scientists are working to carry the same know-how to illness of the central nervous system, probably repairing the injury of neurodegenerative illness.
Kenai Therapeutics, a San Diego biotech startup, is working to do exactly that in Parkinson’s illness. As STAT’s Allison DeAngelis experiences, the corporate raised an $82 million Collection A to fund the event of off-the-shelf cell therapies crafted from donor stem cells. Kenai expects to advance its first remedy right into a medical trial later this yr.
The corporate, whose buyers embody Remedy Ventures, plans to construct a pipeline of cell therapies for different neurological ailments. “What excited me initially, is the power to increase this past Parkinson’s,” stated Jeff Jonas, a accomplice at Remedy Ventures. “Parkinson’s actually is, in methods, a sentinel indication that will enable higher growth into different CNS indications.”
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Novo’s chasing a ‘vaccine-like’ model of Wegovy
Novo Nordisk can barely make sufficient of Wegovy to fulfill demand for the dramatically efficient weight problems therapy. However scientists within the firm’s analysis ranks are already at work on a moonshot therapy that may render that weekly injection out of date.
As STAT’s Elaine Chen experiences, Novo has arrange a Boston-area science hub dedicated to next-generation medicines, together with weight problems merchandise which may operate extra like preventive therapies than weight-loss remedies.
“We’ve a really early suppose tank on: what wouldn’t it take us, from a know-how standpoint and from an ecosystem standpoint, to make long-lasting GLP-1 molecules?” Novo’s Chief Scientific Officer Marcus Schindler stated in an interview with STAT yesterday. “May we take into consideration vaccine-like properties, the place think about you had, yearly, an injection with an equal of a GLP-1 that actually lets you keep weight reduction and have cardiovascular advantages?”
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Extra reads
- Q&A: A biotech VC chief shares her subsequent massive bets, STAT
- FDA chief very involved about pretend weight reduction medicine, Reuters
- CDC advisory panel says folks 65 and older ought to get a Covid spring booster shot, STAT
- Moderna spells out uncommon illness ambitions, Endpoints