Sangamo Therapeutics Inc. has signed an evaluation and option agreement with Prevail Therapeutics Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly & Co., through which Prevail has been granted rights to evaluate certain proprietary adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids developed by Sangamo and may exercise certain options to license these capsids for multiple undisclosed neurological targets.
Dealmaking proved alive and well, with Sangamo Biosciences Inc. disclosing a tie-up worth as much as $1.19 billion with a subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Co., while Mirum Pharmaceuticals Inc. pledged to acquire for $445 million the bile-acid product portfolio owned by Travere Therapeutics Inc.
To bolster its obesity treatment pipeline, Eli Lilly and Co. is buying Versanis Bio Inc. in a massive cash deal that could reach $1.92 billion. The total amount of the deal includes an up-front payment and development and sales milestone payments. Privately held Versanis, of Boston, brings to Lilly its lead asset bimagrumab, a monoclonal antibody that’s enjoying a resurgence since a failure in treating sarcopenia.
Edding Group Co. Ltd. announced June 23 it filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong Exchange – news that comes amid a steep drop in China’s biopharma IPO market forecasting sluggish activity in a near-frozen “capital winter.”
More evidence of big pharma’s interest in type 1 diabetes (T1D) arose as Eli Lilly and Co. disclosed its plan to buy encapsulated-cell-therapy collaborator Sigilon Therapeutics Inc., bringing aboard SIG-002, the early-stage drug on which the pair has been working since 2018. The news blasted upward shares of Cambridge, Mass.-based Sigilon (NASDAQ:SGTX), which closed June 29 at $21.15, up $17.24, or 441%.
Edding Group Co. Ltd. announced June 23 it filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong Exchange – news that comes amid a steep drop in China’s biopharma IPO market forecasting sluggish activity in a near-frozen “capital winter.”
In a deal worth $2.4 billion in cash, Eli Lilly and Co. agreed to acquire Dice Therapeutics Inc., gaining a franchise of oral IL-17 inhibitors for chronic autoimmune diseases.
If Eli Lilly and Co. had been hoping its migraine drug, Emgality (galcanezumab), would emerge with unequivocal superiority against Pfizer Inc.’s Nurtec ODT (rimegepant orally disintegrating tablet), giving the once-monthly injectable biologic an advantage in the highly competitive CGRP space, the pharma firm likely was disappointed. Findings from the phase IV Challenge-MIG study did not meet the primary endpoint, which called for Emgality’s statistical superiority over Nurtec ODT on the percentage of patients achieving a 50% or greater reduction in monthly migraine days.
In its first untitled letter in more than a year, the U.S. FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) took Xeris Biopharma Holdings Inc. to task for two webpages promoting the company’s Recorlev.
Verve Therapeutics Inc. has entered into an exclusive research collaboration with Eli Lilly and Co. focused on advancing Verve’s preclinical stage in vivo gene editing program targeting lipoprotein(a) (Lp[a]), a risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), ischemic stroke, thrombosis and aortic stenosis.
