Addimmune, a biotech that is working on a cell therapy for HIV, announced Wednesday that it plans to merge with 10X Capital Venture’s SPAC to become a public company. The biotech intends to trade under the ticker $HIV.
The merger values Addimmune at about $500 million. Addimmune spun out of American Gene Technologies in June, taking the experimental HIV therapy with it. Jeff Galvin, who is CEO of American Gene Technologies, is also CEO of Addimmune.
The biotech’s lead candidate, called AGT103-T, takes immune cells from people with HIV, engineers them, and delivers them back to the body. In an early-stage safety study, the biotech enrolled 13 people, but only ended up dosing seven people following manufacturing and storage issues, according to a study published in Frontiers in Medicine. Of those seven, none experienced serious adverse events, but did experience side effects such as nausea and headaches following treatments. — Lei Lei Wu
WHO designates EG.5 as new Covid-19 ‘variant of interest’
The World Health Organization said in a risk assessment Wednesday that it is declaring “EG.5 and its sub-lineages as a variant of interest.”
The risk assessment said EG.5 is a descendant of variant XBB.1.9.2, which has the same spike amino acid profile as XBB.1.5. XBB.1.5 is the variant that the newest iteration of Covid-19 vaccine from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech focuses on.
WHO said that there had been an increase in EG.5 reported — noting global prevalence of 17.4% in the week of July 17-23, an increase of almost 10% from 7.6% four weeks earlier.
However, the global health body noted that the public health risk posed by the variant globally is low.
“While EG.5 has shown increased prevalence, growth advantage, and immune escape properties, there have been no reported changes in disease severity to date,” the organization said. It also cautioned that “due to its growth advantage and immune escape characteristics, EG.5 may cause a rise in case incidence and become dominant in some countries or even globally.” — Paul Schloesser
Tango Therapeutics raises $80 million in private placement discount
Oncology biotech Tango Therapeutics announced Thursday morning it was selling 15.5 million shares of its stock to a group of investors in a private placement. The biotech agreed to sell those shares at $5.15 apiece, a 34% discount from its closing price Wednesday of $7.81 each.
The financing, expected to close Friday, was led by Nextech — and other investors pitched in, including Bain and Third Rock Ventures. The raised funds, according to Tango, are expected “to enable rapid expansion across multiple tumor types” for two of its PRMT5 programs, as well as fund the company through proof-of-concept for its clinical stage programs.
This comes more than two years after Tango combined with Boxer Capital’s blank-check company in April 2021 in a $353 million SPAC deal.— Paul Schloesser
Inovio stops developing candidate in cervical lesions indication
Inovio announced in its second-quarter earnings report Wednesday that it was stopping development of VGX-3100 in the US as a potential treatment for cervical, high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSIL). However, the biotech is still looking at the drug in international markets.
The biotech said that the move to stop US development came from various factors, including analysis of biomarker data which concluded that “substantial work would be needed” to refine the biomarker before use in further Phase III trials. Additionally, Inovio said that according to FDA, at least one — but potentially more — “well-controlled trials” would need to be run before the candidate would be considered.
“Given these factors, Inovio has determined that its resources are best invested in other pipeline candidates with a faster potential path to market,” the biotech said.
Inovio also said that in different countries, the candidate could still be an option for cervical HSIL. The biotech noted its partner ApolloBio, which is still developing VGX-3100 in the Chinese market for the indication in a Phase III trial.
This axing comes after Inovio recently announced it would cut 30% of its remaining workforce‚ which it wrote would save the company approximately $9.9 million. — Paul Schloesser
