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But we are proud to say that Georg Kääb contributed 140 entries already.
The Swiss pharmaceutical group has agreed to another, deeper ADC partnership with China’s Hansoh Pharma, with potential milestone payments exceeding $15 billion. The deal comes amid mixed developments: While China wants to do more to protect its biotech technologies from flowing abroad, Roche’s new investment decisions in Germany are on hold for now.
Merck KGaA is acquiring British biotech company Silence Therapeutics for $1.3 billion. The main value driver is an siRNA candidate for polycythemia vera. But the research platform and Berlin site are also part of the package. The deal is another sign that RNA interference is moving beyond a specialist technology into the broader pharmaceutical business. With a premium of 82% over the 30-day volume-weighted average share price, Merck is setting hearts racing in the siRNA community.
Australian biopharma company CSL has entered an exclusive global partnership with Basel-based Alentis Therapeutics to co-develop and co-commercialize lixudebart, an investigational antibody targeting claudin-1. CSL will pay Alentis $355 million upfront and the Swiss biotech is eligible for up to another $1.2 billion in commercial milestone payments. Once the drug reaches the market, global profits will be split 55% to CSL and 45% to Alentis. What is the deal all about?
Immunic is preparing to transition from a late-stage development biotechnology company into a fully integrated commercial organization focused on multiple sclerosis (MS). At the center of its strategy is vidofludimus calcium, an oral therapy being developed for relapsing and progressive MS. European Biotech spoke with Immunic’s CEO Erik Lundgren about the company’s clinical trials and commercial ambitions, the role of neuroprotection and why he believes the next major opportunity in MS may lie beyond relapse control.
Boehringer Ingelheim has partnered with New York-based Envisagenics to hunt for new targets in hard-to-treat solid tumors, opening up more than $1 billion (€873 million) in potential payments.
Australian radiopharma company Telix Pharmaceuticals has agreed to acquire Munich-based ITM Isotope Technologies for an initial $1.65 billion (€1.44 billion), combining Telix’s commercial radiopharma business with one of Europe’s largest producers of therapeutic radioisotopes.
New data from the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Seoul are giving BioNTech’s oncology strategy more substance beyond its mRNA platform. Gotistobart has shown a marked survival benefit in previously treated squamous NSCLC, while the company’s leading bispecific antibody pumitamig continues to generate encouraging signals across tumor types and in combination with an antibody-drug conjugate. The key question now is whether these early signals can translate into registrational success.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is providing German Ethris with €30 million to advance clinical development of its mRNA-based antiviral candidate ETH47. The Munich-based RNA specialist has been working on the approach for several years. The EIB financing also highlights a persistent challenge in pandemic preparedness: broad-spectrum antivirals may have substantial societal value, but their commercial market is difficult to predict.
Novartis has suffered another pipeline setback after del-desiran, an antibody-oligonucleotide conjugate acquired with Avidity Biosciences, failed to significantly improve hand function over placebo in the Phase 3 HARBOR study in myotonic dystrophy type 1.
North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), a state located in the North-West of Germany, is investing €200 million to connect university hospitals in Aachen, Bochum, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Essen, Cologne and Münster, as well as the Technical University Dortmund in an AI network for cancer medicine.