The Friday Five newsletter will focus on the top five - deals, pipeline, funding, and news of the week. The complete list is available here: Industry Updates

🤝Deals

1️⃣ Virica Biotech announces R&D partnership with Oxford Biomedica to improve the manufacturing of lentiviral vector gene therapies using viral sensitizers

2️⃣ Capricor Therapeutics and Nippon Shinyaku enter partnership for exclusive commercialization and distribution of CAP-1002 for the treatment of duchenne muscular dystrophy in the U.S

3️⃣ GenScript ProBio initiates a CDMO contract for next-generation CD47 antibody with InnoBation Bio

4️⃣ Evotec SE has entered a target and drug discovery partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim, focusing on induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based disease modeling for ophthalmologic disorders.

5️⃣ Swiss biotech Idorsia and Syneos Health have extended an existing collaboration to commercialize daridorexant for the treatment of insomnia across Europe and Canada

⏫ Pipeline

1️⃣ US FDA issues complete response letter to Merck’s NDA for gefapixant

2️⃣ Lyra Therapuetics initiates Phase 3 trial for chronic rhinosinusitis treatment

3️⃣ Verona Pharma completes enrollment in Phase 3 ENHANCE-2 trial evaluating ensifentrine for maintenance treatment of COPD

4️⃣ Vyepti (eptinezumab) approved by the EU Commission for the preventive treatment of migraine in adults

5️⃣ 4D Pharma announces additional positive data from Part A of the Phase I/II Trial Of MRx-4DP0004 for the treatment of asthma

💰 Funding

1️⃣ Lyra Health completes $235M funding round, led by Dragoneer, to fuel international expansion: with the new funding, Lyra will accelerate its delivery of comprehensive, evidence-based, culturally responsive mental health care benefits for employees and their families around the world

2️⃣ Leyden Labs, with license from J&J, secures $140M to stop viruses 'at the gate' with a nasal spray: The Dutch biotech will deploy the proceeds on developing a platform that induces protection in the mucosa, or the nose and throat, from future variants of SARS-CoV-2, the flu, and other emerging respiratory viruses

3️⃣ Gene editing startup Metagenomi raises $175M to advance research pipeline: funding should help Metagenomi advance its programs, potentially to the point of asking the FDA for permission to begin human testing

4️⃣ Gilead tags along again to support cell therapy biotech Kyverna in $85M fundraising: Kyverna, which focuses on autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, will use the funds to advance KYV-101 into the clinic for diseases such as lupus nephritis, systemic sclerosis, and inflammatory myopathies

5️⃣ Septerna launches with $100 million Series A financing to expand the frontier of GPCR-targeted medicines using the native complex platform

📰 News

1️⃣ Six companies hit the clinic with innovative therapeutic candidates (Tscan therapeutics, Applied Pharmaceutical Science, Tango Therapeutics, SQZ Biotech, Ranok Therapeutics and Lyell Immunopharma)

2️⃣ Elon Musk's Neuralink plans to implant chips in human brains to treat neural disorders: Neuralink's goal is to build something called a "brain-computer interface" that allows people to transmit and receive information between their brain and a computer wirelessly

3️⃣ Current anti-COVID pills work well against omicron, but antibody drugs are less effective, study finds

4️⃣ Psychedelics - the next trip for CMOs: Mind-altering psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and ‘magic mushrooms’ are moving into the pharmaceutical mainstream and creating substantial opportunities for contract manufacturing organizations

5️⃣ Early research suggests cancer drug could help flush HIV from its hiding spots: Pembrolizumab, which revives the immune system and encourages it to attack tumors, also has the ability to flush HIV out of its hiding spot in immune cells