Orna Therapeutics Inc., which is pioneering a novel circular RNA protein expression technology in several therapeutic areas, has achieved lift-off. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company has closed a broadly based alliance in infectious disease and oncology with Merck & Co. Inc., under which it is getting $150 million up front and up to $3.5 billion in development, regulatory and sales-based milestones. In addition, Merck, of Rahway, N.J., is investing another $100 million in Orna’s equity, as part of its $221 million series B round, which the company also disclosed on Aug. 16.
Canwell Biotech Ltd. raised more than ¥100 million (US$14.8 million) in a series A+ financing. The funds will help accelerate trials for its pipeline of anticancer assets, such as the TLR7 agonist CAN-1012, and preclinical development of other projects too, CEO Henry Yu told BioWorld. The State Development and Investment Corporation Venture Capital Co. Ltd. was the round’s sole investor.
Novartis AG’s attempt to repurpose its immunology drug canakinumab as an oncology therapy was always considered a long shot. Now, the chances of success have receded further after another phase III failure in lung cancer. The phase III Canopy-A study, which tested the drug as adjuvant treatment in adults with stages II-IIIA and IIIB completely resected non-small-cell lung cancer failed to meet its primary endpoint of disease-free survival vs. placebo.
News of GSK plc’s decision to decline its option for MAT2A inhibitor IDE-397, the lead compound from a 2020 collaboration with Ideaya Biosciences Inc. sent the latter’s shares (NASDAQ:IDYA) slipping 35% to close Aug. 15 at $10.20. For Ideaya, however, which maintained that it has sufficient capital to see the program through phase II on its own, the move works out just fine.
A new method has been devised to produce generic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells at scale by directing induced pluripotent stem cells to differentiate into mature T cells in vitro. The generic T cells can then be engineered to express a range of different chimeric antigen receptors.
Beigene Ltd.’s tislelizumab met its primary endpoint of noninferior overall survival vs. sorafenib as a first-line treatment in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), marking the eighth positive phase III trial readout for the anti-PD-1 drug across multiple cancer types and lines of therapy.
Glubio Therapeutics Inc. has raised $22 million in a series A+ round to support the development of its targeted protein degradation drugs. With the investment, Glubio expects to file INDs for two molecular glue degraders for hematological malignancies in early 2023 in both China and the U.S.
Neither the primary endpoint of overall response rate nor the key secondary endpoint of progression free survival achieved statistical significance in Isofol Medical AB’s phase III Agent study of arfolitixorin in combination with 5 fluorouracil, oxaliplatin and bevacizumab in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), licensee Solasia Pharma KK reported.
An investor’s wish to know more about the total landscape of a drug candidate is not enough, on its own, to make a company’s disclosures about the drug and its development materially misleading. So said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in affirming the dismissal of a shareholder suit against Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc. and its executive officers.
The U.S. FDA has approved Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. and Astrazeneca plc’s Enhertu (fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan) as the first HER2-directed therapy for patients with HER2-low metastatic breast cancer.
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