It’s been just a few months since Bay­er opened its new $140 mil­lion on­col­o­gy re­search and in­no­va­tion cen­ter in Cam­bridge, MA, just down the road from its old Kendall Square digs. Now it’s all hands on deck to beef up the pipeline — and that means deals are com­ing, ac­cord­ing to glob­al on­col­o­gy head Chris­tine Roth.

Though the phar­ma gi­ant is still hold­ing its cards close to the vest, Roth told End­points News on Wednes­day that she’s most in­ter­est­ed right now “in that Phase I-plus space.”

“Mid-stage de­vel­op­ment, things where Bay­er can ei­ther pro­vide ex­per­tise and de­vel­op­ment, so our ex­per­tise in chem­istry, small mol­e­cule man­u­fac­tur­ing, or places where we al­ready have es­tab­lished in­fra­struc­ture, boots on the ground in a giv­en coun­try,” she said in an in­ter­view at Bay­er’s US Sci­ence & In­no­va­tion Fo­rum at the new lo­ca­tion.

It’s all part of Bay­er’s strat­e­gy to be­come a top 10 on­col­o­gy play­er by 2030, start­ing in prostate can­cer and the com­pa­ny’s re­cent­ly ap­proved Nube­qa and ear­li­er treat­ment Xofi­go. Nube­qa was first ap­proved in 2019 for men with non-metasta­t­ic cas­tra­tion-re­sis­tant prostate can­cer, but swung an ad­di­tion­al in­di­ca­tion in com­bi­na­tion with do­c­etax­el last month.

Bay­er faces a suite of ri­vals in the prostate can­cer space, in­clud­ing Pfiz­er and Astel­las’ Xtan­di and John­son & John­son’s Er­lea­da. De­spite on­ly rak­ing in $239 mil­lion in 2021, Bay­er raised its peak sales fore­casts for Nube­qa in Feb­ru­ary from €1 bil­lion to €3.4 bil­lion. The com­pa­ny has since plucked two on­col­o­gy heads from ri­val GSK — Roth and Tara Fren­kl, the new head of on­col­o­gy de­vel­op­ment.

The path ahead lies in com­bi­na­tions, Roth said, while al­so tout­ing the com­pa­ny’s new state-of-the-art pre­ci­sion med­ical on­col­o­gy labs in Kendall Square.

The sun­ny lab spaces with stun­ning views of the Charles Riv­er — in­clud­ing space for cell and tis­sue ex­per­i­ments and chem­istry pro­teomics labs — oc­cu­py the top floor of Bay­er’s new of­fices, which al­so house Bay­er’s busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and li­cens­ing units. She called Vi­t­rakvi, ap­proved in 2018 for TRK fu­sion can­cers, “our very first suc­cess sto­ry” in pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy.

“I grew up in IO. I think if we can be­come the Keytru­da back­bone ther­a­py, the one that any prostate can­cer in­ves­ti­ga­tor will want to have as their com­bi­na­tion part­ner, that will al­so fur­ther dif­fer­en­ti­ate Nube­qa in the fu­ture,” Roth said. “In five years, I’d like to see us have the mar­ket lead­ing po­si­tion in prostate can­cer through mul­ti­ple as­sets there and the com­bi­na­tions.”

The on­col­o­gy head wouldn’t di­vulge much about the com­pa­ny’s BD strat­e­gy. How­ev­er, she did say that “it’s very easy for us to look at small­er deals that are ei­ther ad­ja­cen­cies to where we are to­day, or add-ons to the com­mer­cial foot­print that we have around the world.”

That doesn’t mean big deals are out of the pic­ture. “We have a very clear idea of what a very ex­pen­sive mid-stage ac­qui­si­tion would have to look like for us to do it,” she added.

The com­pa­ny’s new lab space puts it close to Blue­Rock, AskBio and Vi­vid­ion, all com­pa­nies Bay­er ac­quired and has said it will work with at the Kendall Square fa­cil­i­ty. It’s al­so home to ven­ture cap­i­tal arm Leaps by Bay­er, which just yes­ter­day an­nounced the launch of Cap­stan Ther­a­peu­tics, put to­geth­er by a who’s who group of cell ther­a­py sci­en­tists, in­clud­ing for­mer Sil­ver­back CEO Lau­ra Shawver, cell en­gi­neer­ing ex­perts Carl June and Bruce Levine, among oth­ers.

Leaps head Juerg Eck­hardt told End­points that the ven­ture arm will make a to­tal of 10 in­vest­ments this year, and will make progress in Asia in the com­ing years, where “we be­lieve there are op­por­tu­ni­ties there that we don’t want to miss.”

“Whether we ac­quire the sci­ence or not, it just starts your mind think­ing in new di­rec­tions,” Roth said of Leaps in­vest­ments.

As for Bay­er, Roth added that the com­pa­ny is go­ing to keep “pluck­ing our way up that list.” The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly among the top 20 on­col­o­gy play­ers. “In five years, I think we could prob­a­bly make it to 13,” she added.

With household names like Botox and cancer treatment Keytruda, it’s no surprise that the global injectable drugs market is expected to top $1.2 trillion between 2022 and 2030. With a projected 9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in that same period, the market is quickly expanding to provide desperately needed treatments in areas like oncology and orphan disease to psychiatric disorders and immunodeficiencies.

Last quarter’s biotech IPO raise was the lowest in five years, but the team at Prime Medicine thinks their “holy crap” gene editing technology can break the spell.

The Cambridge, MA-based company, founded by Harvard biologist and gene editing pioneer David Liu, penciled in a $151 million raise on Thursday, setting the terms for an 8.9 million-share offering at a range of $16 to $18. At the midpoint, the preclinical startup would be worth $1.7 billion.

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The nation’s largest lab provider is coming to your living room — with both its tests and a first-ever advertising campaign.

Quest Diagnostics’ lineup of 50+ tests, from sexually transmitted disease screenings to allergy and metabolic panels, lets people skip the line at doctors’ offices and get results at home. And now it’s launching its largest inaugural consumer marketing campaign in support.

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Weeks after CEO Vas Narasimhan unveiled a “US-first” strategy in reshaping Novartis, the Swiss pharma giant has revealed plans to cut around 400 jobs at its Dublin campus by the end of 2024.

The cuts are part of a major restructuring that Narasimhan initiated back in April, cutting out $1 billion in costs and letting go of some key execs while combining the pharmaceuticals and oncology units under one roof. In an attempt to achieve a “leaner and simpler” business, Novartis is chopping 8,000 of 108,000 current roles worldwide, a spokesperson told Endpoints News on Thursday.

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Pfizer won’t be the only drugmaker to file an RSV vaccine with the FDA this year.

GSK — another frontrunner in the long race to develop a shot that can protect the elderly from respiratory syncytial virus infections — is out with what CSO Tony Wood calls “truly exceptional” Phase III results, opening the door to regulatory submissions in 2022.

The update marks a key and much-needed win for GSK’s RSV ambitions after an observation related to safety forced it to stop trials in pregnant women. It had hoped that by vaccinating pregnant women, it could immunize babies against the virus.

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Not two years after the family-owned Swiss pharma Helsinn engineered a $2.4 billion deal to get a piece of BridgeBio’s infigratinib — later approved as Truseltiq — it’s all coming to an abrupt end.

LianBio, the biotech player that holds the China license to the drug, flagged the news in an SEC disclosure — although it appears that BridgeBio has previously reported it in a September filing.

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Acadia Pharmaceuticals is creating a crowdsourced mosaic of Rett syndrome photographs — inside the digital artwork of a young woman who is living with the condition. The “Rett Revealed” campaign showcases Emily Shifflet, a 27-year-old artist in Pennsylvania, and her “Confetti” painting that she created using eye movements and specialty digital software.

For the rest of October, people in the Rett community can submit their own images to help “color in” the grayscale artwork and further bring Shifflet’s work to life with photos. In early November — after the end of October’s Rett syndrome awareness month — Acadia is planning a final reveal of the images and painting mosaic.

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GSK is shuttering commercial operations in Kenya and tapping third parties to take over distribution, the company said on Thursday morning.

The move, reported earlier by Business Daily Africa, will impact a number of jobs, though GSK has declined to reveal how many. With the spinout of Haleon this summer, GSK no longer owns any manufacturing sites in Kenya.

“We will continue to supply our needed medicines and vaccines in Kenya, and we will work with our distribution partners towards a smooth transition in 2023,” a GSK spokesperson said in an email to Endpoints News. 

Last year, Roche and Genentech paid $50 million for licensing rights to Lineage Cell Therapeutics’ OpRegen program, a cell therapy that looks to regenerate healthy versions of retinal pigment epithelial cells in patients’ eyes.

Now the biotech is growing its physical presence with a new facility in the US and an expansion in Israel.

Lineage has opened the doors to a 12,000-square-foot R&D facility in Carlsbad, CA, and announced an expansion to its GMP manufacturing facility in Jerusalem. The expansion in Israel will allow for the development of more large-scale manufacturing processes and the continued supply of materials necessary for the Phase I/II of OpRegen.

Bioscience & Technology Business Center The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas

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