February 20, 2020 - BioPharma Dive
Cancer biotech Tocagen will merge with the privately held Forte Biosciences, bringing its decade-plus run as an independent company to a close some four months after it laid off two-thirds of its workforce in a restructuring.
The combined company, which will use Forte's name and trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under a new stock ticker, will advance Forte's experimental skin disease therapy into Phase 2 study this year.
February 20, 2020 - Fierce Biotech
GlaxoSmithKline has struck a deal to access two Immatics T-cell receptor (TCR) therapeutics. The
deal
will see GSK pay $50 million (€46 million) upfront and commit to $550 million in milestones for TCRs against two solid tumor targets identified by Immatics.
Germany’s Immatics has entered into a series of collaborations in recent years, leveraging its pool of around 200 targets to land deals with Amgen, Celgene and Genmab. As Immatics CEO Harpreet Singh sees it, the deals are testament to the potential for TCR therapies to expand the list of solid tumors that are amenable to treatment using immunotherapies.
February 19, 2020 - Fierce Pharma
With a gene therapy nearing the finish line and $3 billion in hand from its buyout by Astellas, biotech Audentes
Therapeutics is ready to start work on its $109 million gene therapy manufacturing facility that will employ 200.
The 135,000-square-foot facility will be built in Sanford, North Carolina, Audentes
announced
today. The first phase is slated to take 18 months to build and be operational by 2021. The rest of the investment will play out over two more years.
February 19, 2020 - Fierce Biotech
One day after Five Prime revealed its Opdivo-paired immuno-oncology prospect failed a midstage pancreatic cancer trial, the biotech is farming out some preclinical antibodies to keep its clinical-stage pipeline alive.
The South San Francisco biotech is
picking up $5 million
upfront from Seattle Genetics in exchange for a family of monoclonal antibodies it’s developed. Under the deal, Seattle Genetics will develop antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) based on those antibodies, taking over all R&D, manufacturing and commercialization for those products. Five Prime did not specify how many antibodies are in this “family” but said it could receive up to $525 million in milestone payments for the first two ADCs that come out of the collaboration.