Jun 23, 2020

Amber Tong Editor Just five years af­ter WuXi en­gi­neered a deal to merge its genome cen­ter with NextCODE Health, the WuXi NextCODE brand is be­com­ing his­to­ry as the com­pa­ny cuts off the Chi­nese op­er­a­tions and fo­cus­es on the US, Ice­land and Ire­land. The new name, Ge­nu­ity , eras­es all ref­er­ences to WuXi NextCODE’s sto­ried his­to­ry. The US and Ice­land of­fices of the ge­nomics com­pa­ny were spun out of de­CODE Ge­net­ics af­ter it got ac­quired by Am­gen — with its own twists and turns. Its $400 mil­lion ex­pan­sion in­to Ire­land took place in late 2018, com­plete with the ac­qui­si­tion of Ge­nomics Med­i­cine Ire­land. Where­as WuXi NextCODE was head­quar­tered in Shang­hai, Ge­nu­ity will shift its com­mand cen­ter to Boston. Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, the rea­son for cut­ting off its Chi­na ties is pure­ly le­gal. Chi­na tight­ened its Hu­man Ge­net­ics Re­source Reg­u­la­tion and oth­er rules in mid-2019, and NextCODE was among many com­pa­nies that were des­ig­nat­ed as for­eign en­ti­ties — erect­ing se­ri­ous con­straints to their work and pos­si­bil­i­ty for growth overnight. The ca­pa­bil­i­ties they had in Shang­hai were “val­ued by a num­ber of our in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers,” said Rob Brain­in, whose cards now say CEO of Ge­nu­ity. Now that it’s gone, they have poured more re­sources in both Dublin and Woburn, MA, to do some of the things their Chi­nese col­leagues used to han­dle. Be­tween the three re­main­ing sites, Ge­nu­ity has more than 200 em­ploy­ees sourc­ing, con­sol­i­dat­ing and an­a­lyz­ing ge­nom­ic da­ta for part­ners. Re­cent­ly, they’ve be­gun sup­port­ing Irish re­search in­sti­tu­tions in se­quenc­ing the genomes of Covid-19 pa­tients. Of­fi­cial sep­a­ra­tion from the Shang­hai of­fice is slat­ed for lat­er this year, al­though Ge­nu­ity is al­ready con­sid­er­ing what to do with it. De­spite the shake­up, its in­vestor base ac­tu­al­ly re­mains the same, fea­tur­ing some mar­quee names such as Temasek, ARCH and Se­quoia Cap­i­tal. None of them, Brain­in felt com­pelled to add, will have ac­cess to sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion or in­ter­nal da­ta. As he clar­i­fied in an email: WuXi NextCODE is not owned by WuXi AppTec or oth­er WuXi com­pa­nies. Since 2017, WuXi NextCODE has been op­er­at­ing as an in­de­pen­dent pri­vate com­pa­ny with for­mer WuXi Phar­maT­e­ch share­hold­ers serv­ing among the com­pa­ny’s many in­vestors. AUTHOR Jason Mast Associate Editor As Covid-19 began disrupting global trade early this spring and spurred countries such as India to restrict exports of drugs that could be useful against the virus, the Trump Administration began talking publicly about the need to expand the US’ capacity to make pharmaceutical ingredients onshore. That’s when a pair of private equity firms apparently saw a financial opportunity. Lincoln Equities Group and H.I.G. Realty Partners announced yesterday that they have acquired a 1.2 million square-foot pharmaceutical campus near Princeton, New Jersey from Bristol Myers Squibb. They are now marketing it in terms consistent with the administration’s rhetoric. Read More June 23, 2020 01:00 AM EDTUpdated 04:47 AM This is an important day for Sanofi. For years now it’s been forced to consider deep doubts surrounding its ability to execute in R&D , with a long history of slow-footed clinical advances and a weak in-house pipeline. Its cutting-edge innovation projects came from Regeneron, which it’s been separating from. And today, during R&D day, Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson as well as R&D chief John Reed hope to leave that all behind with a forceful presentation on the pharma giant’s newfound nimbleness and capacity to build an exciting late-stage pipeline with several top projects in hand. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 84,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE John Carroll Editor & Founder Back at the start of January last year, Poseida Therapeutics thought it had an IPO-worthy game plan that would sell on Wall Street. Instead, with the market in something of a dyspeptic mood, the San Diego-based startup with its next-gen approach to cell and gene therapy switched to a Series C mega round and dropped the IPO. Until now, while the market is running red hot for all things drug-development related. And on Friday Nasdaq loaded up a new round of biotech IPOs to sell to investors. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 84,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE John Carroll Editor & Founder Back at the end of last March, with the world locking down in the face of a pandemic, Sanofi tied up with mRNA biotech Translate Bio an a hastily patched-up Covid-19 deal that came with no money down on top of their original pact. Now, as new Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson plants the corporate flag on a quest to do a makeover of their slow-mo corporate image (see related story ), Sanofi widened its embrace with another add-on: And this one comes with the considerable panache of a big upfront to cover a next-gen drug technology. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 84,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE John Carroll Editor & Founder Merck has come out of its corner with a 1-2 late-stage punch aimed at one of Pfizer’s biggest franchises. And they’re rolling the late-stage data out around the world to regulators. Looking to prove that it’s more than just a Keytruda company in R&D, Merck today laid out upbeat top-line results for 2 Phase III studies of V114 , their 15-valent rival to Prevnar 13, which has begun to stagnate a little with its $5.8 billion market. That is still Pfizer’s top-selling drug, with a troubled Ibrance coming up in second place. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 84,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE Amber Tong Editor Last November, Nisa Leung found herself catching up with Margaret Chan in a conference at Beijing, wondering when the next pandemic may be. Leung, now a managing partner at Qiming , had just graduated from business school at Stanford when she was asked to introduce infectious disease experts to Chan, then Hong Kong’s Secretary of Health. The year was 2003; the city was grappling with a local outbreak of a deadly coronavirus disease — later named the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS — that began with a patient zero from mainland China. “I still remember very clearly that back then we tried to develop a diagnostic test in China and we kind of just didn’t have the capability,” Leung said. “And so we had to send the strains to the US for a company to develop it for us.” Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 84,300+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE