Rather than accepting his year-end 2017 ease into retirement by Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc., Martin Mackay is adding another page to his storied biopharma career as one of the trio of co-founders at startup Rallybio LLC. The Farmington, Conn.-based company, which landed a $37 million series A to target rare disease therapies, was "born out of lots of failures and mistakes in the past," said Mackay, who serves as executive leader. "Fortunately, along the way we were able to develop some good medicines, and we hope to bring that experience to bear in a positive way."

Revolution Medicines Inc. (Revmed) strengthened its balance sheet with a $56 million series B while bolstering its C-suite with a trio of executives. The financing will enable the company to advance its lead SHP2 program through IND and into what Mark Goldsmith, president and CEO, called an "exciting" clinical trial program.

Call it bad timing or simple misunderstanding, but investors in Synthetic Biologics Inc. were more focused Monday on the company's disclosure that it voluntarily withdrew its FDA breakthrough therapy designation (BTD) for lead candidate ribaxamase (SYN-004), than for its preliminary accord with the FDA on a proposed design for the planned phase III trial of the agent to prevent Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infection (CDI).

Biogen Inc. didn't have to look far beyond the revenue stream for its spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) blockbuster, Spinraza (nusinersen), to conclude that keeping partner Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. close at hand was in its best interest. With the five-year neuroscience deal that spawned Spinraza set to expire in the next year, Biogen sweetened the pot by paying $1 billion for a 10-year extension.

Surface Oncology Inc. picked a day when the U.S. financial markets were flowing solid red to price its upsized IPO of 7.2 million common shares at $15 apiece – the high end of its proposed range – and raise $108 million. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company added $11.5 million in a concurrent private placement of 766,666 additional shares to Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research Inc. at the IPO price. A 30-day option to underwriters to purchase up to 1.08 million additional common shares could add $16.2 million to Surface's haul.

More than a year after an independent data monitoring committee (IDMC) suggested that Argos Therapeutics Inc. halt the pivotal phase III ADAPT trial of lead candidate rocapuldencel-T (roca-T, formerly AGS-003) for futility, the Durham, N.C.-based company threw in the towel and said it was exploring a range of strategic alternatives, including a potential merger or sale of the company.

PARIS – Several prominent studies featured at the 2018 International Liver Congress (ILC), the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), made clear that the industry has made progress but not yet found the silver bullet against one of its biggest foes: nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). If anything, ILC participants likely left Paris with more questions than answers about future directions for NASH study and treatment.

PARIS – Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), along with its forerunner conditions, and the constellation of viral hepatitis infections – A, B, C, D and, for some regions of the world, E – seemed to generate the most attention at the 2018 International Liver Congress (ILC), the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL). However, rare liver indications garnered their share of the spotlight, included several presentations singled out by EASL for potentially high impact.

PARIS – Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. used the International Liver Congress (ILC) as the forum to report solid success in the phase I and I/II open-label extension (OLE) studies of givosiran to treat acute hepatic porphyrias (AHPs), a family of ultra-rare inherited disorders.