For a whopping $7.1 billion up front, Roche AG is buying Telavant Holdings Inc., a firm that is owned by Roivant Sciences Ltd. and Pfizer Inc. The deal also includes $150 million on the back end, and Roche gains rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize a fully human monoclonal antibody targeting tumor necrosis factor-like ligand 1A, RVT-3101, for treating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and possibly other diseases in the U.S. and Japan. Pfizer retains the rights for the rest of the world.
A new deal between privately held Hummingbird Bioscience Pte. Ltd. and Endeavor Biomedicines Inc. is just one of three antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) agreements reached in the past week, marking a fourth-quarter surge for the therapy. Endeavor has acquired the exclusive, worldwide rights to Hummingbird’s HMBD-501, a HER3-targeted ADC with an exatecan payload. Hummingbird could receive up-front and milestone payments of up to $430 million, along with royalties from net sales.
Nkarta Inc. is looking to return to the heady heights it hit three years ago when its shares were going for around $70 each. The company is reinventing itself as a cancer fighter and branching out as an autoimmune specialist. Nkarta joins at least four other companies looking at expanding their cell therapies into other autoimmune indications.
Monte Rosa Therapeutics Inc. has cut a deal with Roche Holding AG that brings the molecular glue degrader-based medicines developer an up-front $50 million and the possibility of more than $2 billion in milestone payments. The Boston-based company coupled the deal by releasing positive interim data from the phase I dose-escalation portion of its phase I/II open-label, multisite study of MRT-2359 in Myc-driven solid tumors.
Pfizer Inc. may have a blockbuster on its hands with the U.S. FDA’s approval of Velsipity (etrasimod), a selective sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) receptor modulator for adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis (UC).
In a race with Karuna Therapeutics Inc. to get its schizophrenia drug to market, Cerevel Therapeutics Holdings Inc. has priced an underwritten public offering at $22.81 per share. The offering is worth of about $450 million, with the company estimating sales of the 19.7 million shares will yield net proceeds of about $433.6 million.
To get ahead in a tough market like the industry now finds itself, companies are advised to know themselves and their business well, better than they probably think they know themselves. A panel of investors at the BioFuture 2023 conference cautioned that CEOs must have a deep understanding of how their companies are differentiated from their competition in order to thrive.
Unlocking the future of drug development often means removing obstacles that currently stand in the way. Reimbursement is one of those obstacles, as is keeping humans deeply involved as innovators and patients even as artificial intelligence (AI) increases its role. A panel of developers spoke about what they anticipate will be the biggest changes in the coming 10 to 20 years at the BioFuture 2023 conference in New York on Oct. 5. A common theme was reforming the structure of reimbursements, which has traditionally been a problem in the digital therapeutic realm, according to Eric Elenko, chief innovation and strategy officer at Puretech Health plc.
Unlocking the future of drug development often means removing obstacles that currently stand in the way. Reimbursement is one of those obstacles, as is keeping humans deeply involved as innovators and patients even as artificial intelligence (AI) increases its role. A panel of developers spoke about what they anticipate will be the biggest changes in the coming 10 to 20 years at the BioFuture 2023 conference in New York on Oct. 5. A common theme was reforming the structure of reimbursements, which has traditionally been a problem in the digital therapeutic realm, according to Eric Elenko, chief innovation and strategy officer at Puretech Health plc.
With Tofidence (tocilizumab-bavi), a monoclonal antibody from Biogen Inc., the U.S. FDA has approved the first biosimilar to the Roche Group AG’s Actemra (tocilizumab), a blockbuster with declining numbers. Tofidence was greenlighted Sept. 29 for treating rheumatoid arthritis in adults, and for treating polyarticular and systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis in those ages 2 and older. It’s also the first biosimilar approved to treat systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis.