Privately held Good Therapeutics Inc. entered a merger agreement in which Roche Holding AG will gain rights to a conditionally active PD-1-regulated IL-2 program, as well as exclusive rights to the platform technology for development of PD-1-regulated IL-2 receptor agonist therapeutics, in exchange for an up-front cash payment of $250 million. Additional payments could come with the achievement of predetermined development, regulatory and commercial milestones. The team at Good Therapeutics, meanwhile, will continue advancing its platform for conditionally active therapies via a new company, the aptly named Bonum Therapeutics Inc.

Arsenal adds to its storehouse with a $220M series B

Arsenal Biosciences Inc., of South San Francisco, closed on an oversubscribed $220 million series B financing so it could continue developing its programmable cell therapy research programs and its candidates for treating solid tumor malignancies. Arsenal’s lead program is AB-1015 for treating ovarian cancer. New investors in the financing include Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which is also partnering with Arsenal in developing T-cell therapies to treat solid tumors. Other investors include Softbank Vision Fund 2, Byers Capital, Emerson Collective Investments, Green Sands, Hitachi Ventures and Sixth Street. Existing investors include the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Westlake Village Biopartners, the University of California San Francisco Foundation Investment Company, Euclidean Capital, Waycross Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.

What works, what doesn’t? Debate continues in COVID-19 treatment

An editorial published Aug. 23 in the New England Journal of Medicine Evidence added heat to the debate about the efficacy of drugs for people hospitalized with COVID-19. Titled “What Next? New Drugs, Old Drugs, and New Challenges in Choosing Treatments for COVID-19,” the editorial called out Veru Inc.’s phase III trial with sabizabulin, an oral treatment for patients laid up with severe to critical disease. Findings with the inhibitor of microtubule function – it’s related to colchicine, binding to tubulin’s colchicine-binding site – were detailed in the same issue.

Pharmaxis finds new hope for PXS-4728 in neurodegenerative diseases

Sydney-based Pharmaxis Ltd. has found new funding to breathe life into a drug that looked like it might sit on the shelf for a while, but now appears to be a good candidate for tackling Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. The AU$5 million (US$3.5 million) in funding comes from the Parkinson’s Virtual Biotech program, the drug discovery arm of Parkinson’s UK, a key charitable funder of Parkinson’s research in Europe. Collaborators at the Universities of Sydney and Oxford will lead the study of PXS-4728, which is expected to begin recruiting in early 2023.

Akston starts small and likes it that way

Akston Biosciences Corp. emerged from a successful small company that was sold to a pharma major. For Todd Zion, that’s a back-to-basics move that suits him just fine. Zion co-founded Smartcells in 2003 with technology developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company went on to develop the once-daily injectable self-regulating insulin product Smartinsulin and sold it to Merck & Co. in what was, at the time, one of the largest preclinical pharmaceutical acquisitions ever. That was nearly 12 years ago and Zion and other Smartcells cofounders moved on to create Akston to get away from what they saw as big pharma’s slow and risk-averse approach to drug development. “Big pharma is good at a lot of things, but if it’s not careful, it can marry up things that don’t spell out success,” Zion told BioWorld. He described that time in 2010 as deciding he was “too young to retire and had too many good ideas.”

Also in the news

Abivax, Alaunos, Alvotech, Amylyx, Apexigen, Astellas, Aston, Bausch + Lomb, Bavarian Nordic, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bostongene, Brickell, Carmell, Clarity, Dizal, Dizlin, Dyne, Elicio, Equillium, Forxiga, Good, Hitgen, Hoth, Imfinzi, Immunovant, Immutep, Innovent, Ironwood, Iveric, Jacobio, Laekna, Mannkind, Nanotics, Novaliq, Oncoresponse, Orbital, Perceptive, Pharmather, Regeneron, Ribon, Samsung Bioepis, Swissmedic, Synaptixbio, Synlogic, Tenaya, Unison, Vernalis, Wugen, Yingli, Zymeworks