| |   | Meghana here, disappointed to learn that yet another experimental vaccine failed to prevent HIV. Also, STAT reports exclusively on Verily's new focus on Onduo and health equity. | | | Experimental J&J HIV vaccine fails in Phase 3 Another blow to the HIV vaccine space: A series of four injections, administered over the course of a year, failed to prevent new infections in a Phase 3 study of 3,900 volunteers. The trial, led by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen, was scrapped after researchers observed there were just about as many new HIV cases among people in the vaccine arm as in the placebo arm. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to advancing innovation in HIV, and we hope the data from [the trial] will provide insights for future efforts to develop a safe and effective vaccine,” Penny Heaton, Janssen’s global therapeutic area head for vaccines, said in a statement. There have been at least five experimental HIV vaccines that have failed in Phase 3 — underscoring how difficult this mutable virus has been to inoculate against. Work is being done in the mRNA space to develop an HIV vaccine, but it’s still in safety testing. Read more. | Verily bumps up Onduo’s prominence Alphabet spinout Verily is prioritizing Onduo, its portfolio company whose chronic disease management platform has generated prolific data that could power new drug and device discovery. Verily announced last week it would cut 15% of its workforce, with a new objective that “will center our strategy on closing the gap between research and care,” CEO Stephen Gillett said. But Onduo will escape this paring-down — and instead will achieve higher prominence, STAT has learned. Onduo seems particularly focused on teasing apart data generated by clinical studies — getting granular about what medical approaches are effective and what are not, so that companies can improve their products and optimize trials. Vindell Washington, who has led up Onduo, has taken on a new role at Verily, helping promote health equity while integrating consumer products with the company’s research arm. Read more. | Targeting Cancer: the new frontier of immunotherapy and precision oncology STAT’s latest report, Targeting cancer: The new frontier of immunotherapy and precision therapy, reveals the latest strategies in immuno-oncology. Read the report today! STAT+ subscribers receive 20% off. | Bluebird selling stock to stay afloat Last year, gene therapy stalwart Bluebird Bio acknowledged that it was desperately short on cash — raising “substantial doubt” that it could even stay in business. The company has since been actively seeking out cash, announcing this week that it planned to sell 20 million shares of its stock at $7.28 a pop, raising about $145 million, Endpoints writes. The company’s stock dropped about 10% on the news. These shares are a far cry from Bluebird’s 2018 heyday, when stock soared past $100. Bluebird also sold a priority review voucher earlier this month to Bristol Myers Squibb for $95 million. It won two of these hot-ticket items after two if its gene therapies, Skysona and Zynteglo, won approvals. It sold the first voucher to Argenyx back in November for $102 million. Bluebird’s planning to use these funds to help commercialize its approved (and costly) treatments, which are just beginning to generate revenue
The cash infusions — which are meant to keep Bluebird running through 2024 — are also meant to help commercialize Skysona and Zynteglo, and potentially its experimental sickle cell gene therapy lovo-cel. Bluebird will submit data on lovo-cel’s to the FDA later this quarter. | Wilbur Ross’s $320 million SPAC for Alzheimer’s SPAC fever may have died down in recent months, but we’ve now got another such deal on the books. Alzheimer’s-focused biotech Aprinoia Therapeutics will merge with Ross Acquisition — the special purpose acquisition company headed by Wilbur Ross, who served as U.S. secretary of commerce under the Trump administration. The Massachusetts company will begin trading on the public market as soon as the deal closes, FierceBiotech writes, which will likely be in the first quarter this year. The deal’s worth $320 million, per Bloomberg. Ross himself invested a $7.5 million convertible note, and plans to provide up to $12.5 million in capital at the close of the deal. The company plans to use the cash to bring Aprinoia’s diagnostic tool, APN-1607, through commercialization in China. It’s currently being tested in a Phase 3 trial in China, and in a Phase 2 study in the U.S. | More reads - Junshi Phase 3 PD-1 blocker shows promise in NSCLC, BioSpace
- The next giant step for microbes, Nature Biotechnology
- Gilead fosters growth with plans for new research center in California hometown, FierceBiotech
- Moderna CEO in talks with China to supply COVID vaccines, Reuters
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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