Emendo Biotherapeutics Inc. CEO David Baram told BioWorld his firm’s allele-specific gene-editing approach offers such an advantage over previous methods that “we decided to take the challenge of curing diseases that require the highest precision possible,” and the New York-based firm bears an impressive list of partners. “Doors opened immediately and collaborations formed very fast,” sometimes “even faster than we could digest,” he said.
Ten days after its JAK1 inhibitor, itacitinib, failed a phase III trial in acute graft-vs.-host-disease (GVHD), Incyte Corp. has finalized a deal that could provide an alternative growth path. It is paying Morphosys AG $750 million up front, investing $150 million in its stock and is on the hook for up to $1.1 billion in milestones for a 50% interest in U.S. rights to the CD19-targeting antibody tafasitamab (MOR-208) and for 100% of the rights in all other territories.
Apellis Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s CEO, Cedric Francois, said his firm’s phase III study called Pegasus testing pegcetacoplan, or APL-2, in paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) “finally established that there is an important unmet medical need in this disease.”
Nearly four years after its start, a phase III trial of Gamida Cell Ltd.'s ex vivo expanded cord blood candidate, omidubicel, for hematologic malignancies is fully enrolled, the company said.
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