Avexis Inc. made it out the door with an upsized IPO, pricing 4.75 million common shares at $20 apiece – the midpoint of its intended range – to raise $95 million. But the company's shares (NASDAQ:AVXS) encountered headwinds as soon as they stepped off the stoop, falling as much as 20 percent early and closing at $18.05 for a loss of $1.95, or 9.8 percent, on another down day in the broader markets that included a 2.4 percent fall-off in the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index, which closed at 2,572.84.
Patience, persistence and no small amount of pragmatism enabled Armo Biosciences Inc. to hit the $50 million target for its series C round, launched in September 2015 just as the capital markets soured.
Yumanity Therapeutics pulled down a $45 million series A led by Fidelity Management & Research Co. – "the investment group, not the venture group," Tony Coles, chairman and CEO, clarified – in a vote of institutional confidence that "almost never happens" in an early round, he said. The syndicate included seed investor Redmile Group along with Alexandria Venture Investments, Biogen, Sanofi-Genzyme Bioventures and Dolby Family Ventures.
FDA briefing documents released Friday morning in advance of Tuesday's Arthritis Advisory Committee Meeting suggested the agency will go gentle on the biologics license application for CT-P13, Celltrion Inc.'s biosimilar to Remicade (infliximab, Janssen Biotech Inc.) that is approved elsewhere as Remsima (infliximab). .
LAM Therapeutics, a portfolio company of Connecticut biotech start-up incubator 4Catalyzer, closed a $40 million financing to advance lead programs, LAM-001, an inhaled mTOR kinase Inhibitor in phase I development to treat lymphangioleiomyomatosis – also known as LAM lung disease – and LAM-002, a selective kinase inhibitor that is cytotoxic for certain cancers with little or no effect on normal cells.
Glaxosmithkline plc (GSK) expanded the terms and sweetened the economics of its strategic collaboration and licensing agreement with Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc for a T-cell receptor (TCR) engineered cancer immunotherapy program initially targeting NY-ESO-1.
C-4 – the plastic explosive, that is – is designed to produce "shock and awe" in military use. Although there's a biological tie-in as the fourth chemical step in producing enzymatic reactions, it was more the blast metaphor that led to the naming of C4 Therapeutics, which hopes to blow a hole in conventional thinking about the development of targeted drugs.
Avalanche Biotechnologies Inc. plans to acquire privately held Annapurna Therapeutics SAS through an all-stock transaction that will combine pipelines, management teams and resources with the goal of creating a gene therapy company that’s bigger than the sum of its parts. What remains to be seen is whether the deal can reverse the slide that has plagued Avalanche since the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company disappointed investors last year with phase IIa results of AVA-101 in wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), despite the fact that data met the study’s 12-month safety endpoint.
Responses from 30 participants in a recent roundtable as part of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (CSDD) Executive Forum indicated that 48 percent of their phase II and III trial sites missed enrollment targets in 2015 and 11 percent failed to recruit a single patient. Fewer than half of patients screened for these trials actually completed them, according to the newly released R&D Management Report from the Tufts CSDD.
