Sweeping reorg at Orion — centered around cancer and pain — claims 30 staffers – Endpoints News

More than a month af­ter Ori­on sig­naled that it’s go­ing to bring out the bud­get axe in search of a ma­jor shift, the Bay­er part­ner has set­tled on a plan — and fi­nal­ized how deep the cuts are go­ing to be.
The Finnish biotech has de­cid­ed to fo­cus on can­cer and pain mov­ing for­ward while mov­ing out of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive and rare dis­eases. In ad­di­tion, it’s drop­ping the de­vel­op­ment of a chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease treat­ment.
As a re­sult, 32 out of its rough­ly 500-strong R&D work­force will be “made re­dun­dant,” and on­ly six of them will be of­fered po­si­tions else­where with­in the com­pa­ny. This is out of the 430 staffers whom Ori­on has pre­vi­ous­ly said will be af­fect­ed.
Ori­on not­ed that it will con­tin­ue to make and sell in­haled pul­monary drugs as well as neu­ro ther­a­pies in its com­mer­cial port­fo­lio, and in­tends to keep in­vest­ing in those treat­ments al­ready on the mar­ket.
Ex­ecs cit­ed the at­trac­tive prospects of painkillers and can­cer drugs as the rea­son for the strate­gic shift.
The an­dro­gen re­cep­tor in­hibitor Nube­qa, a prostate can­cer treat­ment de­vel­oped in part­ner­ship with Bay­er, will an­chor the on­col­o­gy front. Ori­on is al­so work­ing on oth­er ex­per­i­men­tal prostate can­cer drugs.
It’s work­ing with Chi­na’s Jem­incare to de­vel­op a se­lec­tive NaV 1.8 block­er to treat acute and chron­ic pain.
Fi­nal­ly, al­though it’s drop­ping a COPD drug, Ori­on notes it will com­plete an on­go­ing bioe­quiv­a­lence study for a new for­mu­la­tion of tiotropi­um to treat COPD for the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket.
How are top investors navigating the longest biotech bear market in almost 20 years? RBC Capital Markets Healthcare Desk Sector Strategist Chris McCarthy discusses key fundamentals, macro-awareness and the continued impact of COVID with HealthCor’s Ben Snedeker and Omega Funds founder Otello Stampacchia.
Biotech indexes may be down, but both Snedeker and Otello Stampacchia, Ph.D., Founder and Managing Director of Omega Funds, see opportunities in the market. In Snedeker’s opinion, investors need to seek out companies with the potential for meaningful revenue growth, particularly those that are mispriced in the current bear market.
Clay Siegall, the co-founder and longtime CEO of Seagen, is on a leave of absence following an alleged incident of domestic violence, the company revealed Monday morning.
While Siegall — who informed the company that he’s in the middle of a divorce — denied those allegations, the Seagen board of directors formed a committee to conduct an investigation, with the help of a law firm.
In the meantime, Roger Dansey, CMO since 2018, will step in as interim CEO to lead the company as it navigates the expansion of its commercial antibody-drug conjugates while plotting the clinical advancements of experimental ones.
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SAN FRANCISCO — Seven years ago, Silicon Valley’s brashest venture capitalist invited a soft-spoken Stanford biophysicist out for pancakes not far from here, planning to make a request he publicly swore he’d never make.
By that point, Marc Andreessen had already completed his rise from tech prince — Time magazine literally put him on the cover on a throne in 1996 — to tech kingmaker. The baby-faced founder of Netscape, briefly the world’s dominant web browser, re-emerged in 2009 as head of Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z for short, that quickly became one of the industry’s most sought-after VC firms.
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Damien McDevitt thinks frequently about the name Aspen Neuroscience. Specifically, should the neuroscience portion be dropped as the San Diego biotech considers expanding beyond the CNS?
McDevitt, the 21-year GlaxoSmithKline veteran and former Akcea Therapeutics CEO who took over the helm of Aspen in January 2021, now has even more deep-pocketed investors to help him and his 60-plus employee team consider their voyage beyond Parkinson’s thanks to a $147.5 million Series B.
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A federal jury in Delaware on Friday ordered Illumina to pay Complete Genomics Inc., a subsidiary of the BGI Group, the world’s largest maker of commercial genetic sequencers, almost $334 million, finding Illumina infringed on two DNA sequencing patents.
The case, began in 2019 when CGI sued the San Diego-based biotech over the patents, alleging that Illumina’s “two-channel” sequencing system and its kits that prepare DNA fragments for sequencing violated CGI’s patent rights.
What do you get when some of the most powerful CDMOs in the world join forces? The first SPAC dedicated to meeting the critical demand for biomanufacturing on the continent.
eureKING will be a publicly listed shell company. It is backed by eureKARE, the investment company focused on developing synthetic biology and microbiome innovation across Europe.
The company has plans to raise 150 million euros, Reuters reported. It will list on the Euronext Paris, and has identified 40 manufacturing targets. Michael Kloss, formerly of PHC Holdings, told Reuters that it plans to swallow three CDMOs that each make roughly 50 million euros a year over the next few years.
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Clay Siegall was placed on leave from his posts as CEO and chairman of prominent Seattle-area biotech Seagen after an arrest by the Edmonds Police Department on April 23.
At 3:41 a.m. local time on April 23, police were dispatched to Siegall’s home, where he was arrested on charge of 4th degree assault domestic violence gross misdemeanor, the police department’s public information officer confirmed to Endpoints News. Siegall had a court appearance the next day, the officer said, noting the investigation is now in the court’s hands.
Arbutus and Genevant filed a lawsuit back in February accusing Moderna of stealing the former’s patented lipid nanoparticle technology for its Covid-19 vaccine. On Friday, Moderna put its hands up, claiming that the plaintiffs are suing the wrong party in the wrong court.
Moderna requested a dismissal on Friday, arguing that Arbutus and Genevant should really be suing the federal government, as the vaccine was supplied to the feds through a contract as part of the country’s emergency response efforts.
The Thai Food and Drug Administration will soon review trial results from its country’s first locally-developed Covid-19 vaccine, which uses the same mRNA technology that successful vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have also employed. If all goes well, Thailand will roll out its first homegrown vaccine by the end of this year, its government has said.
The first lot of the vaccine was produced by BioNet-Asia, and developed by Chulalongkorn University researchers, the Bangkok Post reported. The jab, dubbed ChulaCov19, has yet to begin clinical trials in humans but expects to later this year, the Chula Vaccine Research Center said. The center worked in collaboration with UPenn Professor Drew Weissman, who also worked on the mRNA vaccine tech that Pfizer/BioNTech deployed.
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