Recent Articles in News & Analysis

Aurora Biosynthetics, a Sidney company, launched to offer manufacturing services for RNA therapeutics to the Asia-Pacific region. Aurora is a division of Myeloid Therapeutics, a three-year-old RNA company headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. Aurora is a public-private partnership between the New South Wales Government, which contributed $200m Australian ($134m US) for the construction; RNA Australia; and Myeloid Therapeutics. The facility will supply Myeloid with its own RNA products, while Aurora will also manufacture products for other companies. Terms of the partnership were not disclosed. More details....

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Miami’s Summit Therapeutics raised $235 million from a combination of company insiders and biopharma investors. Two years ago, the company acquired global (ex-China) rights to ivonescimab, a bispecific PD-1/VEGF candidate, from Guangzhou’s Akeso in a $5 billion deal. It was an expensive acquisition ($500 million upfront), but it was perceptive. Over the weekend, Akeso announced ivonescimab out-performed Merck’s Keytruda in non-small cell lung cancer patients. Summit’s stock price has more than doubled since the announcement, partly because of the trial results and partly due to the $235 million capital raise. Summit now has a market capitalization of $16.5 billion. More details....

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Astellas opened a new innovation center in Cambridge, Mass that will build a Massachusetts research network to develop breakthrough therapies. The Astellas Life Sciences Center (ALSC) will connect incubators, biotechnology start-ups and academia. The facility will also contain the first US-based SakuLab™ incubator space, a shared laboratory for innovative external partners. Previously, Astellas has opened a SakuLab™ in its Japanese Research Center. Cambridge is the preeminent US biomedical hub, and with the new facility, Astellas plans to participate in its scientific growth. More details....

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Connect Biopharma has moved its headquarters to San Diego from Suzhou in a move that makes the company US-centric. But the company’s future direction isn’t clear. It has two clinical stage autoimmune drug candidates and $110 million in cash after a $220 million IPO on Nasdaq three years ago. But it isn’t conducting any clinical trials currently. In 2023, it out-licensed China rights to its lead drug, rademikibart, to Simcere in a $141m ($21m upfront) deal. Simcere is conducting a China trial, and it supplied all of Connect’s $24 million in first-half revenues this year. Connect would like to find some way to conduct a US Phase III trial of rademikibart without paying for it, probably an out-licensing. What happens after that? The company doesn’t say. More details....

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