Novavax delays COVID-19 vaccine regulatory submissions—again Ginkgo lands on Nasdaq via $17.5B SPAC merger, giving it billions to fuel growth Lilly, MiNA ink broad deal to upregulate proteins using RNA Nuvalent bags $135M to trial resistance-beating kinase inhibitors in lung cancer AbbVie oncology exec Thorstein Graef jumps ship for natural killer cell biotech Acepodia Ex-Purdue CEO Timney lands at amyloidosis biotech Attralus Appia Bio aims for a new kind of off-the-shelf CAR-T with $52M raise Still chasing after an FDA nod, Orchard posts a long-term data win for its latest gene therapy Pharma industry's reputation hits plateau amid spike in vaccine hesitancy COVID-flu combo vaccine from Novavax sparks immune response to both viruses in animals Featured Story | By Amirah Al Idrus Novavax will not file for approval of its COVID-19 vaccine until July at the earliest, thanks to manufacturing issues related to an assay needed to show regulators that its vaccine manufacturing process is consistent across different sites. read more |
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Top Stories By Nick Paul Taylor Ginkgo Bioworks is set to go public through a $17.5 billion merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The deal, which involves Arie Belldegrun, will generate $2.5 billion of gross cash proceeds to support Ginkgo’s efforts to engineer cells to enable new product development. read more By Nick Paul Taylor Eli Lilly has struck a deal with MiNA Therapeutics to develop small activating RNA (saRNA) candidates against up to five targets across its key therapeutic focus areas. Lilly is paying $25 million upfront and committing to milestones of up to $245 million per target to work with MiNA. read more By Nick Paul Taylor Nuvalent has raised $135 million to take ROS1 and ALK kinase inhibitors into the clinic. The series B, which comes months after Nuvalent disclosed a $50 million round, sets Nuvalent up to study drugs designed to improve on products such as Roche’s Alecensa and Pfizer’s Xalkori. read more By Annalee Armstrong Cell therapy biotech Acepodia nabbed AbbVie cancer R&D veteran Thorsten Graef as chief medical officer. Graef rose up the ranks after AbbVie’s 2015 acquisition of Pharmacyclics, which brought the blockbuster cancer drug Imbruvica into the pharma giant’s fold. read more By Amirah Al Idrus Having sold off The Medicines Company to Novartis for $9.7 billion last year, former Purdue CEO Mark Timney is taking the helm of yet another biopharma company. He joins Attralus Therapeutics, a company working on new treatments for systemic amyloidosis, alongside several other new hires. read more By Amirah Al Idrus Appia Bio launches with $52 million to develop off-the-shelf cell therapies for cancer based on hematopoietic, or blood-forming, stem cells. Its platform, dubbed ACUA, allows for the programming of stem cells to become invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, a rare but powerful subtype of T cell. The company hopes to be in the clinic in 2023. read more By Annalee Armstrong Three years after receiving a gene therapy from Orchard Therapeutics in an early-stage clinical trial, 100% of patients with an inherited disease that damages the immune system were still alive, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine today. read more By Beth Snyder Bulik Pharma's hockey stick upswing is flattening out, at least reputation-wise. The good news is the industry is still the biggest gainer when it comes to pandemic image-polishing, according to The Harris Poll’s most recent survey. read more By Arlene Weintraub As Novavax prepares to file for FDA emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 shot, the vaccine developer is already looking ahead to the possibility of combining coronavirus and flu protection. 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