DUBLIN – Without particularly looking for a deal, immunometabolism specialist Sitryx Ltd. landed quite a large one – a licensing agreement in autoimmune disease with Eli Lilly and Co. involving up to four preclinical programs, for which it is receiving $50 million up front, $10 million as equity investment and up to $820 million in development milestones.

As organisms adapt to their environment, adaptations that serve them in their current environment can become liabilities if that environment changes. The control of traits that are an asset in one situation and a liability by the same gene is called antagonistic pleiotropy. In the March 16, 2020, online issue of Nature Genetics, researchers reported a method to systematically identify mutations that conferred antagonistic pleiotropy – in the form of resistance to one drug, but heightened sensitivity to another – in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells.

HONG KONG – Chinese biopharmaceutical company Abbisko Therapeutics Co. Ltd., of Shanghai, defied turbulent stock markets amid the COVID-19 pandemic to snag $70 million in its latest round of financing.

During the conference call on earnings in March, CEO Dror Harats told investors that “the most important thing” about VBL Therapeutics Ltd.’s then-upcoming analysis of interim phase III data with gene therapy VB-111 (ofranergene obadenovec) is that it was “designed in a way that will enable us to tell the market if we are at least as good as what we've seen” in the phase II experiment.

Cytomx Therapeutics Inc. CEO Sean McCarthy told BioWorld that the longish hiatus between deals broken by the tie-up with Astellas Pharma Inc. was “very deliberate. Over that period of time, we were generating our first clinical data to get experience with how the technology works in cancer patients with our first two lead programs,” both of which have reached the phase II stage. A year ago in January, he said, the South San Francisco-based firm brought aboard Chief Business Officer Nick Galli to “hit the gas pedal a bit more in business development,” which led to the signing with Astellas, of Tokyo. Shares of Cytomx (NASDAQ:CTMX) closed March 24 at $6.53, up $1.60, or 32%.

BEIJING – Cancer and autoimmune specialist Innocare Pharma Ltd., of Beijing, made a strong debut to raise $288 million on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) on March 23, marking the second biggest IPO in the city since the beginning of this year.

Princeton, N.J.-based Soligenix Inc.’s quick response testing SGX-301 (synthetic hypericin) – with results shown after just six weeks of treatment – puts the company in strong position against cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) as it readies for a “robust” discussion with the FDA.

DUBLIN – The middle of a pandemic may not be the optimal time to launch an oncology-focused company, but Klosterneuburg, Austria-based Oncoone Research & Development GmbH unveiled a €13 million (US$14.1 million) series A round Wednesday, March 18, and laid out plans to develop several different approaches to targeting an immunologically distinct form of a ubiquitous inflammatory cytokine, which is unique to cancer cells and which is associated with a poor prognosis.