Astrazeneca plc is beefing up its cell therapy capabilities in immuno-oncology by acquiring Neogene Therapeutics BV for an initial outlay of $200 million. There’s up to $120 million more on the table for undisclosed milestones and what the companies called a “non-contingent consideration.” Even without the additional earnouts, the deal represents a profitable return for Neogene’s shareholders. The Amsterdam-based firm had raised $110 million in a series A round in 2020, which represented the largest A round in Europe that year. Since then, it has started to move its first program, an autologous engineered T-cell receptor (TCR) T-cell therapy directed against up to five neoantigens, toward a phase I trial in patients with solid tumors. Read More
Cajal Neuroscience Inc., a startup seeking new targets to use in medicines for neurodegeneration, has launched with the completion of a $96 million series A financing led by The Column Group and Lux Capital. The company, inspired by the pioneering work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, is focused on the "mechanistic, spatial and temporal complexity of neurodegeneration" to determine "how, where and when different mechanisms contribute to disease." Read More
Rgenta Therapeutics Inc.’s $52 million in a series A money will let the RNA-focused firm pursue its small-molecule drug efforts “for the next two or three years,” as candidates in cancer and neurology make their ways toward the clinic, said co-founder and CEO Simon Xi. “We’ll go where the science leads us,” he told BioWorld, adding that the cash on hand is sufficient to complete a phase I study. Read More
As the days have grown darker throughout November, global regulatory activity and U.S. approvals have continued to drop, marking the month as the slowest of 2022. Compared with this time last year, regulatory news is down by 9% and FDA approvals are down by a quarter. On top of that, new molecular entity clearances in the U.S. are at a six-year low. Read More
The U.K. Bioindustry Association (BIA) is in an eleventh hour fight against changes to R&D tax breaks that it estimates will result in a £400 million to £800 million (US$480 million to $960 million) cut in payments to the sector. The changes will see cash credit claims reduced from 14.5% to 10%, cutting payments from 33 pence per £1 of spend to 18.6 pence per pound of spend from April 2023. Along with other tweaks, this is an effective 50% cut for biopharmas that do not pay any corporation tax because they are loss-making. Read More
The shadow of two reported patients’ deaths hovers over Eisai Co Ltd. and Biogen Inc.’s Alzheimer’s disease treatment, lecanemab, as the companies prepare to present phase III study data on the drug later today at the 15th Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease conference. Read More
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Arcus, Arcutis, Axsome, Cincor, Clene, Gilead, Immuneering, Lineage, Nabriva, Panbela, Praxis, Providence, Storm, Zynerba. Read More
