Merck is spending €115 million ($137 million) up front and up to €349 million in future payments to buy out German biotech Rigontec.
The Munich, Germany-based company is at work on accessing the retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I) pathway, part of the innate immune system, as a new approach in cancer immunotherapy.
The idea is to induce both immediate and long-term antitumor immunity; its leading candidate, RGT100, is in early clinical trials in patients with various tumors. More details on targets and financials were not given.
The early-stage company was founded back in 2014 as a spinout of the University Bonn in Germany, raising nearly €30 million in that time from a host of VCs, including Boehringer’s Venture Fund, Forbion Capital Partners, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Wellington Partners Life Sciences and MP Healthcare Venture Management.
Though not on the scale of Gilead’s recent $11.9 billion buyout of CAR-T biotech Kite Pharma, Merck hopes this can add to its pipeline of cancer meds in a broader effort to shore up its future in I-O, coming after the commercial success of its checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda, which now has a series of FDA-approved uses across a number of cancers.
By Ben Adams
Source: Fierce Biotech
Monday, the French pharma giant officially moved into its new global home base in Paris, dubbed La Maison Sanofi. The 9,000-square-meter (about 96,875-square-foot) facility comprises two historic buildings and will host around 500 employees, the company explained in a release.
On the first day of the new year, former Sandoz chief Richard Francis will take the reins from Schultz, who is hanging up his CEO hat to retire on Dec. 31, Teva said Monday. The news comes a little more than two weeks after Teva publicly said it was looking for Schultz’s replacement.
General Electric Co. set the terms for the spinoff of its healthcare division, putting an initial value of roughly $31 billion on the soon-to-be-public company. The Boston conglomerate plans to split into three separate public companies by early 2024. Following the healthcare spinoff, it plans to separate its aerospace business from its power and renewable-energy units.
