Sciwind gets licensing deal with Sanofi for metabolic disease candidates; ImmunityBio and EnGeneIC reach deal for nano cell tech

Sci­wind Bio­sciences an­nounced last night that it signed an ex­pan­sive li­cense agree­ment with Sanofi to de­vel­op and com­mer­cial­ize Sanofi’s long-last­ing glu­cose-de­pen­dent in­sulinotrop­ic polypep­tide (GIP) re­cep­tor ag­o­nists. Ac­cord­ing to Sci­wind, the lead can­di­date is cur­rent­ly un­der pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

The deal cov­ers all ap­plic­a­ble in­di­ca­tions for the mol­e­cule. Sci­wind plans to de­vel­op the lead GIP re­cep­tor ag­o­nist as part of com­bi­na­tion with XWoo3, its GLP-1 pep­tide can­di­date which is cur­rent­ly be­ing eval­u­at­ed in Phase II stud­ies to po­ten­tial­ly treat di­a­betes, obe­si­ty and NASH.

‘We look for­ward to the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­bine Sanofi’s long-last­ing GIP re­cep­tor ag­o­nist with Sci­wind’s GLP-1 drug can­di­dates which we hope will lead to de­vel­op­ment of more ef­fi­ca­cious and bet­ter tol­er­at­ed com­bi­na­tion ther­a­pies for meta­bol­ic con­di­tions,’ said Sci­wind’s founder and CEO Hai Pan in a state­ment.

Aus­tralia’s En­Gene­IC and Soon-Sh­iong’s Im­mu­ni­ty­Bio make a deal

Im­mu­ni­ty­Bio has reached a deal with Aus­tralian biotech En­Gene­IC — for a po­ten­tial treat­ment for Covid-19 and can­cer.

The two com­pa­nies an­nounced a deal on En­Gene­IC’s nano cell tech­nol­o­gy, oth­er­wise known as En­Gene­IC Dream Vec­tor, or EDV. Ear­ly re­sults from an En­Gene­IC clin­i­cal tri­al showed that treat­ing Covid-19 us­ing this tech was able to ‘neu­tral­ize’ Covid-19 and all oth­er vari­ants test­ed, in­clud­ing Delta, the com­pa­ny claimed, al­though they have yet to re­lease any da­ta.

And in terms of its ef­fec­tive­ness against can­cer, Phase I and IIa tri­als in pa­tients with ad­vanced pan­cre­at­ic can­cer is un­der­way, and the FDA re­cent­ly au­tho­rized an­oth­er tri­al in the US.

Now on­to the deal. En­Gene­IC will grant Im­mu­ni­ty­Bio an ex­clu­sive, world­wide li­cense to de­vel­op, man­u­fac­ture and com­mer­cial­ize EDV in com­bi­na­tion with its an­ti-can­cer drugs and COVID-19 vac­cine. Im­mu­ni­ty­Bio al­so agreed to build EDV man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties in the US and South Africa, and cov­er costs as­so­ci­at­ed with clin­i­cal tri­als and reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals.

While spe­cif­ic amounts were not dis­closed, En­Gene­IC will al­so re­ceive up­front pay­ments and fees for fu­ture can­cer pro­grams, and the two com­pa­nies agreed to an even split on net prof­it from world­wide sales of EDV-based ther­a­peu­tics.

Tai­ho ex­er­cis­es op­tion with Ar­cus; li­cens­es an­ti-TIG­IT an­ti­bod­ies in Japan and oth­er Asian coun­tries

Back in 2017, Ar­cus Bio­sciences and Tokyo on­col­o­gy biotech Tai­ho Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal agreed to an op­tion and li­cense agree­ment — and Tai­ho has now ex­er­cised one of its op­tions.

The com­pa­nies an­nounced this morn­ing that Tai­ho ex­er­cised its op­tion for two of Ar­cus’s an­ti-TIG­IT an­ti­bod­ies: dom­vanal­imab and AB308 — to be li­censed by Tai­ho in Japan and cer­tain oth­er ter­ri­to­ries in Asia, ex­clud­ing Chi­na.

This is not Tai­ho’s first time ex­er­cis­ing one of its op­tions to an Ar­cus pro­gram — the Japan­ese biotech has al­ready ob­tained ex­clu­sive rights to etru­madenant (AB928), an adeno­sine A2a/A2b re­cep­tor an­tag­o­nist, and zim­bere­limab (AB122), an an­ti-PD-1 mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body.

In ex­change for the ex­clu­sive li­cense, Tai­ho will make an op­tion ex­er­cise pay­ment, as well as ad­di­tion­al pay­ments up­on achieve­ment of clin­i­cal, reg­u­la­to­ry and com­mer­cial­iza­tion mile­stones, and, if any prod­ucts from the pro­gram are ap­proved, will pay roy­al­ties on net sales of such prod­ucts. De­tails on the spe­cif­ic fi­nan­cials re­main undis­closed.

Con­fo makes drug dis­cov­ery deal with Re­gen­eron

Bel­gian biotech Con­fo Ther­a­peu­tics is go­ing in on a deal with Re­gen­eron.

The biotech will be lever­ag­ing its plat­form, which us­es se­lec­tive VHH an­ti­bod­ies to sta­bi­lize G pro­tein-cou­pled re­cep­tors, to­wards drug dis­cov­ery. Ac­cord­ing to the two com­pa­nies, the plat­form will be used to dis­cov­er new an­ti­body drug can­di­dates for two GPCR tar­gets.

While Con­fo will get an up­front pay­ment along with re­search fund­ing, there’s ad­di­tion­al po­ten­tial clin­i­cal, reg­u­la­to­ry and com­mer­cial pay­ments. Any fur­ther de­tails have not been dis­closed.

‘We val­ue this op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case the strength of this new ad­di­tion to our tech­nol­o­gy suite and par­tic­i­pate in what we hope will be the de­vel­op­ment of suc­cess­ful new an­ti­body-based ther­a­pies,’ said Con­fo CSO Chris­tel Menet in a pre­pared state­ment.

Roche fol­lows af­ter Gilead in mak­ing Ama­zon Web Ser­vices its cloud ser­vices provider

Yes­ter­day, Gilead an­nounced that it was mak­ing Ama­zon Web Ser­vices its cloud ser­vices provider. And to­day, it looks like Roche is fol­low­ing suit.

The megaphar­ma an­nounced this morn­ing that it will be us­ing AWS for the ma­jor­i­ty of its work on the cloud to ‘help Roche ex­tract greater val­ue from its health da­ta.’ This may in­clude look­ing at health da­ta re­lat­ed to ge­net­ic make­up of pa­tients, along with drug ef­fi­ca­cy and in­ter­ac­tions, ac­cord­ing to Roche.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Roche is cur­rent­ly us­ing dif­fer­ent ser­vices un­der the AWS um­brel­la — such as an­a­lyt­ics ser­vices, smart­phone app plat­forms and even a ma­chine-learn­ing plat­form.

‘With AWS, we are bring­ing to­geth­er health da­ta in new ways to bet­ter de­tect, di­ag­nose, treat, mon­i­tor, and man­age dis­eases more ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly for the ben­e­fit of pa­tients,’ said Roche Group CFO and CIO Alan Hippe in a pre­pared state­ment.

Zai Lab Phase III study meets pri­ma­ry end­point

One of Zai Lab’s Phase III stud­ies has met its pri­ma­ry end­point.

The biotech’s PRIME study of Ze­ju­la (ni­ra­parib) as a main­te­nance ther­a­py ‘demon­strat­ed a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant and clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival ben­e­fit,’ the com­pa­ny said this morn­ing.

The pa­tients in the study were Chi­nese pa­tients with new­ly di­ag­nosed ad­vanced ep­ithe­lial ovar­i­an, fal­lop­i­an tube, or pri­ma­ry peri­toneal can­cer (col­lec­tive­ly termed as ovar­i­an can­cer), fol­low­ing a re­sponse to plat­inum-based chemother­a­py, re­gard­less of bio­mark­er sta­tus.

‘The PRIME clin­i­cal da­ta in Chi­nese pa­tients con­firmed the clin­i­cal pro­file of Ze­ju­la and were con­sis­tent with the re­sults seen in the glob­al PRI­MA study,’ said Zai Lab’s pres­i­dent and head of glob­al de­vel­op­ment, on­col­o­gy Alan San­dler.

Vi­s­us Ther­a­peu­tics has 3 pres­by­opia can­di­dates meet clin­i­cal end­point in PhII tri­al

Seat­tle pres­by­opia biotech Vi­s­us Ther­a­peu­tics re­port­ed pos­i­tive topline re­sults this morn­ing from its Phase II tri­al.

The tri­al, which was study­ing three new top­i­cal oph­thalmic for­mu­la­tions un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for the treat­ment of pres­by­opia — al­so known as age-re­lat­ed far­sight­ed­ness — achieved the end­point of three lines of im­prove­ment in binoc­u­lar near vi­su­al acu­ity with­out los­ing one line of dis­tance vi­sion with a min­i­mum re­spon­der rate of 83% at one hour. The tri­al stud­ied 85 sub­jects, ages 45 to 80, with two dif­fer­ent types of pres­by­opia at three dif­fer­ent sites in the US.

The biotech said it plans to com­mence Phase III piv­otal tri­als short­ly.

‘We are very en­cour­aged by the VIVID study topline clin­i­cal da­ta,’ said Vi­s­us co-founder, head of R&D and CMO Rhett Schiff­man in a state­ment. ‘We are ex­cit­ed to ini­ti­ate our Phase 3 piv­otal tri­als.’
https://endpts.com/sciwind-gets-licensing-deal-with-sanofi-for-metabolic-disease-candidates-immunitybio-and-engeneic-reach-deal-for-nano-cell-tech/