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 and Collaborations

1️⃣ Biovian to make AAVs for ANLBIO. The deal sees biotech ANLBIO contract Biovian to support upcoming trials of its Alzheimer’s disease gene therapy candidate ANL-101.

2️⃣ OBiO signs MOU to manufacture cell therapy for Korea's EutilexOBiO Technology a gene therapy company, signed a memorandum of understanding with Korea's Eutilex to manufacture Eutilex's cell therapy products in China.

3️⃣ Veristat deepens European ties with the acquisition of SFL. The deal will provide access to an SFL team with deep experience covering a range of therapies in orphan disease and oncology looking to further treatments that could combine artificial intelligence, devices, and diagnostics.

4️⃣ TCI enters into a strategic alliance with VeCollal(R). Collaboration to develop a vegan collagen supplement with the same amino acid composition as type I human collagen.

5️⃣ Altamira Therapeutics and Nuance Pharma enter into exclusive licensing and distribution agreements for Bentrio in China and additional Asian markets. Bentrio is a drug-free nasal spray that forms a protective gel layer on the nasal mucosa, protecting against airborne viruses and allergens.

⏫ Pipeline and Approvals

1️⃣ Astellas gets safety win for phase 3 menopause drug, setting up US, EU filings

2️⃣ Zydus gets DCGI nod for a drug to treat anemia associated with chronic kidney disease

3️⃣ SanBio’s Sakigake cell therapy finally filed in Japan for traumatic brain injury

4️⃣ China approves VR Therapy as a medical device for Acrophobia

5️⃣ Therapeutic app (CureApp) for hypertension now in line for April approval

💰 Funding

1️⃣ Microbiotica nabs $67mn to push 2 microbiome therapies through the clinic. Funding will help push two microbiome-based lead assets through phase 1b trials

2️⃣ An AI biotech emerges from stealth promising drugs 'on-demand.' Creyon Bio wants to develop oligonucleotide-based medicines that can work with any modality, be it antisense, siRNA or DNA and RNA editing.

3️⃣ Popular multiomics tech innovator nets $200mn to expand platform adoption. DNAnexus is a leading provider of cloud-based biomedical data analysis software that provides researchers the ability to analyze human genome data by hosting a cloud-based data analysis and management platform for DNA sequence data.

4️⃣ Precision medicine startup Prenosis raises $20mn for acute care solutions, starting with sepsis. The company will use the funding to grow its biological datasets, advance its AI/ML capabilities to transform data into actionable insights for healthcare providers and initiate the commercialization of its diagnostic and clinical decision support tools.

5️⃣ Morningside Ventures launches Adiso Therapeutics to advance novel therapies for inflammatory diseases. Adiso is advancing an innovative pipeline of small molecules with novel mechanisms of action and single strain live biotherapeutic products (SS-LBP), pursuing lead indications in ulcerative colitis (UC), and C. difficile infection (CDI).

📰 Interesting News

1️⃣ Emerging and smaller pharma are launching more $500M+ products than big pharma. The focus on very large product opportunities or blockbusters, traditionally defined as a product with over a billion dollars in peak annual revenue, is giving way to increasing focus on “near blockbusters" having between $500 million and $1 billion in yearly peak revenue

2️⃣A new treatment to combat obesity and heart disease. An interdisciplinary research team at The University of Texas at San Antonio developed an anti-obesity drug that blocks the effects of cytochrome P450 8B1, the enzyme linked to cholesterol absorption and obesity.

3️⃣ The 10 most innovative medicine and therapeutics companies of 2022. From GlaxoSmithKline’s malaria vaccine to a digital therapeutic for ADHD from Akili Interactive, these companies broke the mold to devise treatments.

4️⃣ Korean biotech firm successfully prototypes insulin, moving towards localization. Undbio Co. has succeeded in prototyping insulin to treat diabetes, company plans to begin production sequentially for insulin glargine, insulin lispro, and human insulin products.

5️⃣ 2022 Contract Manufacturing Survey: Nutraceuticals and Pharmaceuticals. Working with a qualified contract manufacturer offers companies the flexibility to focus on sales, marketing, innovation, and business development based on responses and feedback.