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Hello and welcome back to another edition of Endpoints Weekly! We’ve got a full cadre of reporters in Berlin this weekend for the annual ESMO meeting, so make sure to keep checking back online for updates out of the conference. We’ll also have a rundown of the biggest stories in Monday’s newsletters. But let’s get into this week’s headlines first!
Founding editor John Carroll took an in-depth look at the emerging trends from biotech’s third quarter. His two-part analysis (and subsequent appearance on Post-Hoc Live) showed how dealmaking seems to be making a comeback in the industry. And who were biopharma’s busiest BD teams? Paid subscribers can find out below.
Elsewhere this week, we had a fascinating Q&A with Nobel Prize winner Fred Ramsdell, who made mainstream headlines for being on an off-the-grid vacation when the news broke. We also covered the launch of a new biotech’s radical plan for allergies, Jim Wilson’s outlook on rare disease gene therapy and a massive raise for a GLP-1 startup.
I also took a look at the landscape for PD-1xVEGF bispecifics and whether they’re being tested in the right kinds of cancer. Take a read if you haven’t already, and have a good weekend! — Max Gelman |
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Max Gelman |
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Senior Editor, Endpoints News |
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John Carroll’s Q3 analysis |
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🤝 With the XBI hitting $100 for the first time in a while last month, John took a look at some of the forces driving the uptick in investor enthusiasm, with an assist from DealForma’s Chris Dokomajilar. Not only was there an increase in dealmaking and M&A, but venture investing also picked up in Q3 after a bleak second quarter. The first part of John’s analysis goes deeper into the “why” of it all.
Later in the week, John examined which big companies were angling for deals and noted some surprises. For example, John writes, even though Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb get lots of attention for their deals, neither comes close to the top 5 in licensing deals among peer companies. Paid subscribers can take a closer look at the story being told by the numbers.
John was also joined by Stifel’s Tim Opler on Post-Hoc Live to discuss whether or not the good times in biotech are really, truly back. You can watch the conversation on YouTube or listen to it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. |
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Q&A with a Nobel Prize winner |
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🏔️ Fred Ramsdell was backpacking near Yellowstone National Park when he missed the phone call to tell him he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. From the snow-covered mountains of Montana, he spoke with Endpoints News’ Lei Lei Wu about winning the Nobel, cell therapy for autoimmune diseases, and the evolving state of basic science
research.
Ramsdell, Mary Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi won the prize for their research on regulatory T cells, the cells that keep the immune system under control.
When asked about the current state of the cell therapy field, Ramsdell compared the innovation to cell phones, noting that “they’re too expensive, but no one’s going to make these things cheap and universally available — until they work.”
“Think of the first cell phone, right? This thing that looked like a brick with a big antenna on it,” he said. “But without that, you’re not getting an iPhone.” Read the full conversation here. |
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Excellergy’s radical allergy plan |
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A new startup believes it’s found a way to revolutionize treatment for allergic and immunologic diseases. The company, called Excellergy, debuted this week with a $70 million Series A and a strategy to take on a longtime power player in those spaces: Roche and Novartis’ Xolair. Excellergy calls its drugs “effector cell response inhibitors” that are designed to interfere with the body’s allergic response and tamp down on inflammation. Read more from an exclusive interview we conducted with co-founder Alexander Eggel about how the company’s science works.
Excellergy hasn’t yet decided which diseases it wants to test first for its lead program, but food allergy and chronic hives are currently the top two contenders. Other areas could include certain subtypes of asthma and additional immunologic diseases. |
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Jim Wilson on rare disease gene therapy |
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🧬Gene therapy pioneer Jim Wilson has struggled to convince investors to go in on treatments for ultra-rare genetic diseases. So his startup GEMMABio is pivoting to focus on several earlier-stage programs that target more common diseases. But that doesn’t mean Wilson is giving up on ultra-rare diseases.
The company is separating three clinical programs for ultra-rare diseases and putting them into a new company called Rare Therapeutics. You can get the details here.
“We repositioned GEMMA to focus on those three larger market indications,” he said. “That would then enable us to finance GEMMA. But that’s not why I got into GEMMA — I didn’t get into GEMMA to deprioritize ultra-orphan diseases.” |
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Kailera’s $600 million raise |
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Kailera Therapeutics, a closely watched private obesity biotech, raised $600 million to begin Phase 3 trials. The megaround ties Kailera with Isomorphic Labs for the largest biotech
fundraise of the year.
The Waltham, MA-based biotech said it will use the new funds, in part, to start two Phase 3 trials of KAI-9531, the injectable GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist it in-licensed from Hengrui Pharma. |
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