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 Altamira Therapeutics and Avernus Pharma collaborate for marketing and distribution of Bentrio in Gulf Countries. Under the Agreement, Avernus will start promoting and selling Bentrio in those markets upon registration of the product with the regulatory agencies in the territories.

2️⃣ Janssen has acquired Anakuria Therapeutics. Anakuria’s lead Phase I ready program, AT-20494 provides J&J with the first-in-class opportunity in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, or ADPKD.

3️⃣ Xbrane Biopharma enters agreement with Biogen. The agreement is to commercialize Xcimzane a biosimilar of Cimzia for rheumatoid arthritis.

4️⃣ Hoth Therapeutics partners with Nuvisan, a European CRO/CDMO with topical manufacturing capabilities to manufacture clinical batches of HT-001 topical drug product for its upcoming trial for cancer patients.

5️⃣ Huadong Med acquires rights to Bi-functional Immunotherapy in a $75mn deal. Akso's AB002, a pre-clinical stage candidate, includes a DEEP-engineered soluble PD-1 decoy receptor that traps PD-L2 and PD-L1 and an IL-15 agonist to activate natural killer cells. Huadong will be responsible for development in Asia.

⏫ Pipeline

1️⃣ Daewoong's SGLT-2 Inhibitor set for first filing after Phase IIIs

2️⃣ Cytokinetics announces FDA acceptance of New Drug Application for Omecamtiv Mecarbil for the treatment of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction

3️⃣ Mochida files Inhaled Treprostinil for PAH in Japan

4️⃣ Yuhan’s anticancer drug Leclaza nears winning approval

5️⃣ Lusefi OD Film approved in Japan

💰 Funding

1️⃣ Endeavor BioMedicines closes $101mn Series B financing to advance clinical-stage precision medicine pipeline. Funds will support the advancement of Endeavor’s pipeline programs, including ENV-101 (taladegib), a small molecule inhibitor of the PTCH1 receptor in the Hedgehog signaling pathway for the treatment of cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

2️⃣ Sermonix Pharmaceuticals raises $40mn to test forgotten osteoporosis drug in treatment-resistant breast cancer. Funds will be used to further advance lasofoxifene through late-stage clinical development as a next-generation oral SERM to treat women with increasingly prevalent ESR1 breast cancer mutations

3️⃣ Trialjectory scores $20mn to match cancer patients to clinical trials. The company helps patients find clinical trials and works with pharma companies to limit barriers to enrollment.

4️⃣ Congruence Therapeutics announces $50mn Series A financing to advance platform targeting diseases of protein misfolding. Congruence is a biotech startup working at the interface of computational and experimental drug discovery to design novel small molecules for diseases of protein misfolding

5️⃣ Arkuda raises $64mn as dementia drug moves closer to the clinic. Neurodegenerative disease drug developer Arkuda Therapeutics aims to treat brain diseases by addressing a component of cells that’s key to keeping neurons healthy.

📰 News

1️⃣ Pre-infection deficiency of vitamin D is associated with increased disease severity and mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The study is among the first to analyze vitamin D levels prior to infection, which facilitates a more accurate assessment than during hospitalization, when levels may be lower secondary to the viral illness.

2️⃣ 'Bionic' pacemaker reverses heart failure. A revolutionary pacemaker that re-establishes the heart's naturally irregular beat is set to be trialed in New Zealand heart patients this year.

3️⃣ How do pathogens learn to be pathogens? Partnerships between microbes leading to human disease. New research discovered that the fungus Rhizopus fights back against soil predators and human immune cells by partnering with a bacteria called Ralstonia in a two-way partnership.

4️⃣ Promising drug for people living with obesity. NICE recommends appetite suppressing drug which can reduce a patient’s weight by more than 10%.

5️⃣ Turmeric for stressed skin: Meet Vytrus Biotech's wellbeing wonder ingredient. There is a known relationship between the skin and the nervous system with both cell types coming from the same embryonic tissue.