The latest global regulatory news, changes and updates affecting biopharma, including: Convalescent plasma trials expand; CBD public meeting, generics; ICER updates in CF in MM.
While its mRNA COVID-19 vaccination effort gets the most attention these days, Moderna Inc. is also moving in other directions as the company will lead mRNA discovery programs drawn from its early stage pipeline in new collaborations with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Italy’s Chiesi Farmaceutici SpA. These two deals highlight the “huge opportunity for mRNA beyond SARS-CoV-2 and vaccines,” Piper Sandler analysts wrote Sept. 16.
Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc.’s lenabasum having failed its phase III test in diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis (SSc), attention turned to prospects with the cannabinoid receptor type 2 agonist for other indications.
Weeks after raising an oversubscribed $60 million series A, Affinia Therapeutics Inc., of Waltham, Mass., is collaborating with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. in a far larger deal, one potentially worth more than $1.6 billion.
Privately held Recode Therapeutics Inc. brought in $80 million through an oversubscribed series A financing with plans to continue its preclinical work in primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) and cystic fibrosis (CF).
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. brought in $4.16 billion in product revenues in 2019, bolstered in large part by the late October approval of Trikafta, earning $420 million in the few weeks that remained in the year.