Tubulis GmbH is banking $22.75 million up front and could earn more than $1 billion in development, regulatory and commercial milestones from an alliance with Bristol Myers Squibb Co. focused on the design and development of antibody-drug conjugates for solid tumor applications. It would also receive tiered royalties on the sales of any products that emerge from the pact. The partnership is the first that Tubulis has entered, and it gives BMS access to its P5 conjugation chemistry and its Tubutecan topoisomerase I inhibitor payloads. It represents a significant level of validation for the company’s suite of ADC technologies.
Abdera Therapeutics raises $142M for antibody delivery of radioisotopes
Abdera Therapeutics Inc. emerged from stealth mode with $142 million in equity funding and plans to develop a pipeline of radiopharmaceutical drugs that will employ engineered heavy-chain-only antibody domains as targeting agents. It has already identified a lead, which targets delta-like ligand 3, a Notch pathway protein, which is overexpressed in about 80% of small-cell lung cancer cases, but which is absent from healthy tissue. A manufacturing campaign is now underway, and an IND submission is in the offing. “We plan to file that in 2024,” CEO Lori Lyons-Williams told BioWorld.
Newco news: EBViously’s eye on the prize in race to develop first kissing disease vaccine
With scientists yet to discover the specific antigen that confers protection from Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), there are currently no prophylactic vaccines available for the diseases it causes, the most well-known of which is infectious mononucleosis but which evidence suggests might also extend to immune disorders, multiple sclerosis and various cancers. This hasn’t stopped companies from trying, and one such player, EBViously Inc., is hedging its bets with a wider net, using as many proteins as possible to mimic the original viral pathogen and its complexity in a vaccine composed of non-infectious virus-like particles.
Hastening China expansion: CBC and Mubadala co-lead $315M funding round for Hasten
China’s Hasten Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd. will look for bolt-on acquisitions to deepen its pipeline following a funding round of $315 million that was co-led by Asia’s largest health care-dedicated investment firm, CBC Group of Singapore, and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala Investment Co. The funds raised will catalyze growth and expansion plans for Hasten’s portfolio of chronic and age-related diseases, said Hasten CEO Summer Xia. This latest round of fundraising follows Hasten’s acquisition in March 2022 of a portfolio of five cardiovascular and metabolism drugs sold in China from Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.
US FDA’s Califf: Big pharma has ‘let us down’ in failing to develop non-addictive analgesics
The opioid crisis in the U.S. has not yet been resolved, but FDA commissioner Bob Califf said April 19 the agency could do more to resolve the crisis if Congress granted the agency the authority to require that new opioid analgesics offer superior safety to currently approved products. Califf laid the blame for the crisis on manufacturers in stating that drugmakers had “let us down” in failing to develop novel oral analgesics that avoid the addictive properties that help to fuel the opioid crisis.
PEPFAR challenge is aiding young people who don’t know HIV’s ‘ugliness’
The success of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) over the past 20 years is one of the biggest challenges in reaching its goal of eliminating HIV as a global public health threat by 2030, members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee were told as they moved toward reauthorizing the program for another five years. PEPFAR is credited with saving 25 million lives, cutting AIDS deaths by 60% and reducing new HIV infections by more than half. But continued advances are threatened with a new generation that grew up without the “ugly face of HIV/AIDS” when a diagnosis was a certain death sentence, Elton John and John Nkengasong, the U.S. Global AIDS coordinator, told the committee yesterday.