Two Japanese pharmaceutical companies and a bank are teaming up to form a joint venture to advance therapeutic discoveries from academia. The focus will be innovation from universities in Japan. By Frank Vinluan Academic labs are starting points for many biopharmaceutical industry innovations, and Japan’s universities are no exception. But academic scientists often struggle to find the financing and support to turn their discoveries into new companies, leaving the research to languish in what is sometimes referred to as “the valley of death.” Now Takeda Pharmaceutical, Astellas Pharma, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation are teaming up to form a joint venture intended to advance academic discoveries, primarily innovation from Japan. All three are sharing ownership in the joint venture, whose name has not yet been determined. The joint venture’s founders say the valley of death has become more pronounced in recent years. In response to this challenge, the companies said they engaged ...
Don Tracy, Associate Editor Joint venture aims to implement Invenra’s B-Body bispecific antibody platform to enhance Astellas’ research and development efforts. Invenra Inc. and Astellas Pharma announced that they have agreed to terms on a collaboration that seeks to utilize Invenra’s B-Body bispecific antibody platform to bolster Astellas’ research and development efforts in bispecific therapeutic research. Per the agreement, Astellas will acquire full access to the B-Body platform, with the opportunity for further license negations upon the completion of this initiative. Both teams stated that they remain dedicated to pushing the boundaries of healthcare through innovative research, with the ultimate goal of providing new, effective treatments to patients worldwide.1 “We are honored to partner with the Astellas team, one of the world’s foremost developers of therapeutics,” said Roland Green, PhD, CEO, Invenra, in a press release. “We are excited by the potential of this partnership to yield profound benefits to ...
Astellas Pharma is working with Kelonia Therapeutics, a startup that develops in vivo CAR T-therapies with technology that precisely delivers genetic cargo to cells. The collaboration combines this tech with a platform from Xyphos Biosciences, a cell therapy developer that Astellas acquired in 2019. By FRANK VINLUAN Cell therapy’s next breakthrough could be the engineering of these cells inside the patient. Two deals more than four years apart put Astellas Pharma in position to ramp up its work developing these in vivo treatments. Under the more recent agreement announced late Thursday, Astellas is collaborating with Kelonia Therapeutics, a startup that has developed technology for precisely delivering genetic cargo to target cells in the body in order to make those cells into in vivo CAR T-therapies. Kelonia calls its technology in vivo gene placement system, or iGPS. The genetic payload delivered to a cell gets it to express a receptor that ...
Pfizer is still hungry for ADC opportunities, including in the Far East. Astellas’ impressive phase 3 data for its gastric cancer candidate couldn’t garner an approval because of manufacturing issues. Takeda’s 2022 TYK2 buy from Nimbus was highly competitive, an exec said. And more. 1. JPM24: Even after Seagen buyout, Pfizer oncology chief still eyes ADC deals As Pfizer continues its prowl for antibody-drug conjugate (ADCs) deals, the company is keeping an eye on opportunities around the globe. In an interview, Pfizer’s new oncology chief Chris Boshoff, Ph.D., said the company is looking for opportunities in China, which he said “is important in this whole area, especially ADC development.” The company is “not currently looking for big acquisitions,” Boshoff added. 2. Astellas’ gastric cancer candidate rejected by FDA because of manufacturing issues After running two phase 3 trials, Astellas’ near-term approval ambitions for its zolbetuximab have been dashed because of ...
Astellas Pharma’s zolbetuximab was on track to become the first gastric cancer drug that targets claudin 18.1, a protein found on cancerous stomach cells. Others with clinical-stage programs addressing this this target include AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb. By FRANK VINLUAN Astellas Pharma’s path to winning the first drug approval for a particular promising gastrointestinal cancer target has hit a detour. The FDA turned down the drugmaker’s application, citing manufacturing issues for the therapy, zolbetuximab. Astellas announced the FDA action earlier this week. The company did not go into detail about the problems spotted by the regulator, but described them as “unresolved deficiencies following its pre-license inspection of a third-party manufacturing facility for zolbetuximab.” Astellas added that the agency did not raise any concerns about the safety or efficacy of the drug, nor is it asking for additional clinical data. Zolbetuximab was developed as a treatment for patients with locally ...
Shanghai and Suzhou, TOKYO, December 28, 2023 – Elpiscience Biopharma, Ltd. (Chairman and CEO: Darren Ji, MD, Ph.D., “Elpiscience”) and Astellas Pharma Inc. (TSE: 4503, President and CEO: Naoki Okamura, “Astellas”) today announced a research collaboration and license agreement for novel bi-specific macrophage engagers, ES019 and another program. The two companies will collaboratively conduct early-stage research for these two programs. Elpiscience will also grant Astellas the right to add up to two additional programs to be included in the collaboration. If Astellas exercises its option, Elpiscience will grant Astellas the exclusive right to further research, develop, manufacture and commercialize the products for each program. Elpiscience is a privately held, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing next-generation immuno-oncology therapies for cancer patients worldwide. Their Bispecific Macrophage Engager Platform (BiME®) is anti-tumor associated antigen (TAA) and anti-signal-regulatory protein α (SIRPα) bispecific antibody-based platform to activate Tumor Associated Macrophage (TAM) phagocytosis killing towards ...
Canada-based Phenomic AI has landed two strategic collaborations this week with Boehringer Ingelheim and Astellas-owned cell therapy biotech Xyphos Biosciences to develop cancer therapies. Phenomic and Boehringer have teamed up on a target identification collaboration, announced on 29 November. Under the deal, Phenomic will receive an upfront payment of $9m and may be entitled to up to $500m in research funding and milestones. The Canadian company hasn’t disclosed the financial terms of the deal with Astellas, but the companies aim to develop cell therapies with an antibody directed at a novel target of the tumour stroma, utilising Phenomic’s scTx platform. The company singled out colorectal and pancreatic cancers as being stroma-rich, which would be amenable to being targeted by Phenomic’s platform. These developments mark the first deals announced by Phenomic in three years since the company launched in 2020 with $6m in seed funding. Phenomic’s scTx is a single-cell RNA ...
The FDA has signed off on label expansions for two of the world’s most important cancer medicines—Merck’s Keytruda and Pfizer and Astellas’ Xtandi. Keytruda’s expansion is in stomach cancer, allowing its use alongside chemotherapy to treat first-line patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic HER2-negative gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinoma. Xtandi’s new indication expands its already deep portfolio in the treatment of prostate cancer. It now becomes the only androgen receptor inhibitor approved by the FDA for patients with nonmetastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer (nmCSPC) with biochemical recurrence at high risk for metastasis (high-risk BCR). These patients can be treated with Xtandi with or without GnRH analog therapy. Of men who have had prostate cancer treatment, 20% to 40% will have BCR within 10 years. Of those with high-risk BCR, 90% will develop metastatic disease, with one in three dying. The nod was backed up by the phase 3 EMBARK ...
After this summer’s FDA approval of Iveric Bio’s Izervay—the drug at the center of the $5.9 billion buyout by Japanese pharma Astellas—the battle for the geographic atrophy (GA) crown is on in the U.S. Now, Apellis Pharmaceuticals, which boasts embedded eye disease sales leader Syfovre, is putting up long-term data in a bid to outdo its new rival. Touting data from its GALE extension study, Apellis on Saturday said Syfovre yielded increasing treatment effects year over year and helped patients achieve more than a 40% reduction in non-subfoveal lesion growth at the study’s three-year mark. Apellis rolled out the latest GALE results as part of a presentation at this year’s meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) in San Francisco. The timing coincides with the release of two-year data on Astellas and Iveric’s GA drug Izervay—also at AAO—which suggest the rival drug’s treatment benefit emerged in as few as ...
As Seagen prepares for its takeover by Pfizer, the company’s Astellas-partnered cancer drug Padcev has chalked up a key trial win—in combination with Merck’s Keytruda—in previously untreated metastatic bladder cancer. In the study, Seagen and Astellas’ antibody-drug conjugate Padcev and Merck’s PD-1 superstar Keytruda scored on both overall survival and progression-free survival compared with chemotherapy. An independent data monitoring committee found that the combo’s life extension benefit surpassed the pre-specified efficacy boundary at an interim analysis, the companies said in a Friday release. The results could open the combo up to patients who are eligible for platinum-based chemotherapies cisplatin or carboplatin, regardless of their PD-L1 status. “This study has the potential to be practice changing and offer a new standard of care for first-line metastatic bladder cancer,” Seagen’s R&D head Roger Dansey, M.D., said in the release. “We look forward to presenting the results at an upcoming medical conference and ...
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