Gene therapy developer Beam Therapeutics Inc. has acquired drug delivery specialist Guide Therapeutics Inc. in a deal valued at up to $440 million, adding yet another piece of the integrated platform CEO John Evans told BioWorld the company is striving to build. Guide's lipid nanoparticle (LNP) screening technology could help medicines developed by Beam and its partners reach new targets beyond the liver, an increasingly important endeavor for gene therapy developers like Beam, seeking to maximize the breadth of their growing portfolios. Terms of the deal included $120 million up front, plus up to $320 million in stock-based technology and product success milestone payments. Shares in Beam (NASDAQ:BEAM) fell 12.6% to $96.48 on Feb. 23. Read More
Chengdu-based Sichuan Clover Biopharmaceuticals Inc., known for its Trimer-Tag technology, raised $230 million in a series C financing round. The proceeds will, most notably, help it advance its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, S-Trimer (SCB-2019), to a global phase II/III trial by June. Following its $43 million series B round in December 2019, Clover said on Tuesday, Feb. 23, that it raised more than $400 million in the last 12 months. The company uses its Trimer-Tag technology platform to produce covalently-trimerized fusion proteins to develop protein-based vaccines and biologic cancer therapies. Read More
The first Senate hearing for the nomination of Xavier Becerra as Secretary of Health and Human Services included the predictable questions about his qualifications, given his position as attorney general for the state of California. However, the candidate repeatedly emphasized price transparency for both hospitals and drug manufacturers, the latter of which are still laboring under the perception that price gouging is a common practice. Read More
In the shadow of the COVID-19-related deaths of more than half a million Americans and far more deaths across the world, the Biden administration is reportedly rethinking its position on a proposal before the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property protection for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Read More
HONG KONG – China is steadily greenlighting more COVID-19 vaccines and drugs to go deeper into the clinic, giving the country a growing arsenal against the disease. To date, China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has approved a handful of drugs and 16 domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine candidates for trials, up from 11 in September 2020. Read More
PERTH, Australia – The fight against diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma may finally see some progress, after experiments using 3D models of the tumor in animal studies showed that a combination therapy of the polyamine inhibitor AMXT-1501 (Aminex Therapeutics Inc.) and the ornithine decarboxylase 1 inhibitor difluoromethylornithine could eradicate cancer cells. Read More
Astrazeneca plc officials, during the firm’s Feb. 11 conference call on fourth-quarter earnings, highlighted the oral selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD) camizestrant in breast cancer (BC), which Cristian Massacesi, head of late-stage oncology development, said bears “best-in-class potential, in terms of providing superior clinical benefit at a well-tolerated dose” of 75 mg once per day. Read More
Asalyxa Bio Inc. has closed on an oversubscribed seed financing of more than $2 million designed to advance its lead candidate, ASX-100, into the clinic in acute respiratory distress syndrome. Read More
New hires and promotions in the biopharma industry, including: Aevitas, Bioxcel, Coya, Daiichi Sankyo, DBV, Emergex, Engitix, Fore, Genmab, Intercept, PYC, Vallon. Read More
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Agilent, Elicio, Hoth, Iaso, Innovent, Neoimmunetech, Noven, Ocugen, RDIF, Regeneron, Sanofi, Scpharmaceuticals. Read More
