Shao-Lee Lin, Acelyrin CEO
When Acelyrin closed its Series A late last year, it was met with little fanfare. The biotech had only two employees, the former R&D chief and CBO of Horizon Therapeutics, and didn’t even disclose the size of the raise. Westlake Village BioPartners, an LA-based VC firm and lead investor, proved the most noteworthy aspect of the announcement, having spawned from ex-Amgen R&D head Sean Harper and ex-Kleiner Perkins life sciences director Beth Seidenberg.
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For years, paper-based processes and individual point solutions dominated the clinical research landscape, and patient participation in clinical trials was largely an in-person engagement. But when the COVID-19 pandemic took a stronghold, traditional clinical trial methods emerged as inadequate, putting clinical trials and the life sciences industry at a crossroads. Practically overnight, the industry had to rapidly shift to decentralized clinical trial methods, while maintaining data quality and regulatory compliance.
Demand for life science real estate is surging in China — and one of Asia’s largest investment groups is rising to the call.
CBC Group — the startup engine that recently lured in Merck’s former R&D chief Roger Perlmutter — is joining forces with Netherlands Pension provider APG Asset Management to launch a new Asia-Pacific healthcare platform and China-focused life science venture.
The fund, dubbed CBC China Life Science Infrastructure Venture (CLSIV), completed a first close of $500 million to provide ‘best-in-class facilities’ for research in China. CBC describes it as the vehicle by which the platform, CBC Healthcare Infrastructure Platform (CBC HIP), will operate.
Al Sandrock (Biogen via Youtube)
Two years after Al Sandrock jumped from CMO to the top post in R&D — and just months after the hyper-controversial approval of the experimental Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab (Aduhelm) — Sandrock is planning to step out of his long career at Biogen.
Late Monday evening the big biotech put out word that Sandrock, a longtime fixture in the company after a 23-year stint, is hitting the exit.
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Steve Pearson, ICER president (Jeff Rumans for Endpoints News)
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review on Tuesday morning released its latest on ‘unsupported’ drug price increases for seven top treatments, and how even after rebates and other concessions, these increases cost the US health system an additional $1.67 billion, including almost $1.4 billion from AbbVie’s Humira alone.
The authors of the report winnowed down a list of the top 250 drugs with the largest US net sales revenue in 2020 to just 10 drugs and assessed whether there was even the potential for evidentiary support to back the price increases.
Glen de Vries (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Glen de Vries, the co-founder of the clinical IT software giant Medidata Solutions, died in a plane crash last week.
Emergency crews found the wreckage of a Cessna 172 in a wooded area in northern New Jersey on Thursday. De Vries was an instrument-rated private pilot, though authorities have not yet said who was piloting the plane. He was with his flight instructor Thomas Fischer, 54, and the plane was headed to Sussex Airport from Essex County Airport in Caldwell. He had started his private pilot training with Fischer in February 2016. Fischer opened the flight school with his wife Jodi in March 2012.
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure (Photo by Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
Although sales of Biogen’s expensive new Alzheimer’s drug have been anemic since the approval in June, the prospect of CMS eventually paying for it opens up a billion-dollar can of worms, and already has the agency defending some premium and deductible increases for seniors.
CMS explained late Friday that Medicare Part B will have to increase its standard monthly premium — from $148.50 in 2021 to $170.10 in 2022 — in part because of the massive spending that could occur should the agency sign off on a national coverage decision for the drug, known as Aduhelm, and its $56,000 annual price tag next year.
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To Amanda Wagner, the past two years or so she’s spent at Immunitas feels like a microcosm of her entire career up to now.
Trained in neuroscience and equipped with an MBA, Wagner’s 16-year biopharma career could be split into a first half in R&D and a second in corporate finance and business development. She was consulting for the Longwood Fund in 2019 when the VC firm pulled her aside to talk about a new immuno-oncology company it was incubating.
Kala Pharmaceuticals continued their transition to a commercial-stage biotech late last year with its second OK after a long slog through the clinic. Now the biotech’s execs are turning to M&A to grow the company.
The Watertown, MA eye-focused biotech announced its acquisition of private ocular biotech Combangio this morning. Combangio, a California biotech which has remained under the radar, was in the middle of developing a secretome therapy — and had recently finished a Phase Ib trial, enrolling 8 patients with persistent corneal epithelial defect, or PCED with positive results.
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Can injecting messenger RNA directly into the heart of patients who’ve experienced heart failure help repair the organ? More than three years after AstraZeneca and Moderna launched a first-of-its-kind Phase II trial to test the idea, the pair has now shown the procedure is at least safe.
In a Phase II trial dubbed EPICCURE, seven were treated with AZD8601 — mRNA-encoding vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF-A) — while four were given placebo. After six months of follow-up, investigators concluded the drug met the primary endpoints on safety and tolerability, while the exploratory efficacy analyses support further clinical evaluation.
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https://endpts.com/backed-by-sean-harper-and-beth-seidenberg-an-la-biotech-scores-a-massive-250m-crossover-ahead-of-2022-ipo/
