Deals Of The Week: UCSF Catalyzes R&D Tech-Transfer Deals With Private Sector

Neither MedImmune, the biologics arm of AstraZeneca, nor the University of California, San Francisco, is a stranger to R&D collaboration between private industry and academia, but the agreement they signed on Feb. 11 is somewhat unique in that it will take advantage of a UCSF program that was intended to provide external expertise that might help to move basic research into more advanced stages.

At UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the Catalyst Awards program benefits from the input of industry and academic advisors who review burgeoning science and help select which projects should advance further and be given increased resources. CTSI oversees UCSF researchers working on therapeutics, devices, diagnostics and digital health applications, explained June Lee, director of early translational research at CTSI.

The Catalyst program started with about 120 advisors, and now has about 140 and is growing in numbers. “These folks are from all different disciplines, mostly from industry, and represent various different sectors and areas of expertise for product development in the life sciences,” Lee said. According to her, it’s more of a happy coincidence than a plan that the Catalyst Awards program spurred a broad-based partnership – considering both small- and large-molecule projects in cardiovascular and metabolic disease, oncology, respiratory, inflammation and autoimmune disorders, neuroscience and infectious disease – with MedImmune.

The collaboration could end up bringing early-stage assets to MedImmune (or AstraZeneca) in any of those areas, Lee added, since UCSF has 2,400 faculty, of whom about 1,300 are doing research primarily. “Our people are working in all areas of research, and that’s not accounting for post-docs or graduate students,” she said.

“Our primary goal was to enable and support of early-stage technology projects at UCSF,” she said. “For things that have product potential, we bring in the necessary expertise to help the faculty move projects along. Even though spurring deal-making may not have been our primary purpose, the program really is a very appropriate portal for people on the outside to look through to determine which university technologies are most ready to be licensed out.”

Terms have not been disclosed for the MedImmune/UCSF tie-up but Senior VP and Head of the Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmune Innovative Medicines Unit (iMED) Bing Yao said that unlike the Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland, Baltimore arrangements signed last year, which feature an overall R&D funding allocation, funding for this partnership will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

“Some of the programs, we will want to bring to the next stage – they could be preclinical or [we could want to move them] further into clinical development,” Yao noted. “This way, we can give a lot of input. As a company developing products for multiple therapeutic areas, we can bring our expertise to facilitate [the projects] but each program will be unique.”

The agreement extends for three years, with an option to extend it. MedImmune and AstraZeneca personnel will join with the Catalyst Awards advisors and UCSF staff to determine which products move forward with MedImmune/AstraZeneca backing. And the company will have exclusive options rights to the programs it backs, Yao said.

In the six months, Gaithersburg, Md.-based MedImmune has shored up its local base by signing a five-year, $6.5 million, broad-based R&D partnership with Johns Hopkins University in December and a five-year, $6 million pact with University of Maryland, Baltimore in September. It also has R&D relationships with academia in the U.K. and, now, with the UCSF partnership, gets better access to technological advances stemming from the biotechnology hub in the San Francisco bay area, Yao told Deals of the Week.

UCSF, meanwhile, is one of five founding members of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, founded in 2012 to serve as a clearinghouse for both academia and industry on research underway within U.S. and international drug research programs. Since 2010, UCSF has negotiated research collaborations with Genentech, Pfizer, Sanofi and Bayer, while licensing a preclinical antibody for organ failure to Stromedix and genetic encoding intellectual property for Parkinson’s disease to uniQure.

While that agreement was signed, other M&A and licensing activity was heating up the cold and snowy winter. Read on for the rest of ....

Mallinckrodt/Cadence: Mallinckrodt will have a lot of work to do to make good on the $1.3 billion it’s paying for Cadence Pharmaceuticals, a price more than 10 times the projected 2013 sales for Cadence’s sole product, Ofirmev (intravenous acetaminophen). Mallinckrodt says the acquisition gives it a third therapeutics platform, in the hospital setting, in addition to its existing focus on generic drugs and pain medications. The specialty drug company plans to keep Cadence’s sales and marketing capabilities and acquire additional hospital products to sell through them. Mallinckrodt announced the acquisition Feb. 11, its first major transaction since it was spun-out from medical device and supply company Covidien in July. Ofirmev launched in January 2011 and is approved to treat mild-to-moderate pain, for the management of moderate-to-severe pain with adjunctive opioid analgesics, and for the reduction of fever. It has expected net product revenues of $110.5 million for 2013. That’s more than twice the $50.1 million posted in 2012, its first full year of sales. As of Sept. 30, Cadence shareholders included Fidelity Management (7.6 million shares), T. Rowe Price Associates (7.2 million), Capital Research (7.1 million), Wellington Management (6 million), The Vanguard Group (3.4 million), NEA (2.1 million) and BlackRock (1.9 million). Mallinckrodt will pay $14 per share for Cadence, a 32% premium to the trailing 30-trading-day volume weighted average price; in 2006, the company completed an IPO at $9 per share with a valuation of about $250 million. That gives shareholders who bought and held IPO shares a roughly 1.5x return. - Stacy Lawrence and Jessica Merrill

Pierre Fabre/Aurigene: Pierre Fabre Group, the French pharmaceuticals and cosmetics firm whose sales are split almost equally between drugs and skincare cosmetics, has acquired worldwide development and commercialization rights (excluding India) to a novel immune checkpoint modulator, AUNP-12, from the Indian drug-discovery firm Aurigene Discovery Technologies. AUNP-12 is the only peptide under development as a PD-1 immune modulator, the companies say. The candidate could be associated with greater efficacy and fewer side effects when used as part of combination therapies, they announced Feb. 12. The peptide achieves effective levels in vivo after subcutaneous dosing, and has inhibited tumor growth and metastasis in preclinical models of cancer. Aurigene, the Bangalore-based biotech that has collaborated with six of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies since its inception in 2002, will receive an undisclosed upfront payment from Pierre Fabre, and milestone payments based on development, regulatory and commercial progress. The deal terms are in line with others in this space, the companies said. It’s also the first major deal the French company has signed since the death of its founder, Pierre Fabre, in the middle of last year. Pierre Fabre specializes in the development of anti-cancer drugs, either alone or with partners; with marketed drugs that include Javlor (vinflunine) and Navelbine (vinorelbine), while Aurigene is a profitable Indian biotech that generates lead compounds and progresses them to preclinical development in concert with collaborators, particularly in oncology and inflammation. - John Davis

Retrophin/Manchester: Retrophin, which netted $37.4 million in an initial public offering in January, has arranged to purchase privately held Manchester Pharmaceuticals for $62.5 million, including $29.5 million upfront. Announced Feb. 12, the transaction is expected to close on March 1, Retrophin said. Like Retrophin, Manchester focuses on rare diseases. The Ft. Collins, Colo.-based firm has two FDA-approved drugs in its portfolio – Chenodal (chenodeoxycholic acid), which is indicated for patients suffering from gallstones in whom surgery poses an unacceptable health risk due to disease or advanced age, and Vecamyl (mecamylamine HCI tablets), indicated for the management of moderately severe to severe essential hypertension and uncomplicated cases of malignant hypertension. Retrophin said it also will seek quick FDA approval for Chenodal, the only FDA-approved chenodeoxycholic acid, for cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis (CTX), a rare metabolic disorder that can cause severe intellectual disability or even prove fatal in young patients. The New York firm also guided that it anticipates revenue of between $10 million and $12 million this year overall, and $19 million to $21 million in 2015. - Joseph Haas

Debiopharm/Affinium: Swiss biopharma Debiopharm Group broadened its antibiotic portfolio by acquiring key assets from Toronto-based Affinium Pharmaceuticals on Feb. 11. The deal includes two narrow-spectrum anti-bacterial candidates, the Phase IIa FabI inhibitor AFN-1252 and its Phase I prodrug, AFN-1720. Debiopharm also acquired Affinium’s technology platform with which it created the two drugs. Terms of the arrangement weren’t disclosed. Affinium says its drugs represent a new class of antibiotics that inhibit the type-II fatty acid synthesis pathway, known as FAS-II, essential for bacterial growth. Its compounds have shown promise in combating staphylococcus infections, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-intermedia Staphylococcus aureus infections, while allowing intravenous-to-oral switching for patients leaving hospital care. Debiopharm expects to develop a companion diagnostic to select appropriate patients as AFN-1720 progresses through the clinic. Debiopharm entered the anti-bacterial field last fall, when it struck a deal with India’s TCG Life Sciences to develop new antibiotics. The company is aiming to develop drugs that preserve existing gut flora while overcoming resistance to broad-spectrum drugs. Affinium raised $33 million in two rounds of funding in 2007 and 2011, from investors including SV Life Sciences, Genesys Capital Partners, Forward Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners and Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund.  - Paul Bonanos

Aveo/Astellas: In our “No-Deal of the Week,” Aveo Pharmaceuticals and Astellas announced Feb. 14 that they have terminated a partnership around renal cell carcinoma candidate tivozanib. The Japanese pharma paid $125 million upfront, with $50 million pegged to cover Aveo’s R&D expenses, in 2011 for worldwide rights, except for Asia, to develop, manufacture and market the compound, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor of all vascular endothelial growth factor receptors. An NDA was filed in November 2012, but an FDA “complete response” letter and unenthusiastic reception at an advisory committee left the companies not expecting approval in advanced RCC. They terminated the trial program for that indication and decided to re-focus on developing tivozanib for breast and colorectal cancers. Now, Astellas has decided to exit the collaboration for what it calls “strategic” reasons, and the two companies are terminating a Phase II program studying the compound in CRC. All rights to tivozanib will return to Aveo as of Aug. 11. - J.A.H.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Deals Of The Week: Academic Drug-Discovery Alliance Capturing Industry's Notice

Nashville hosted the first annual conference of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium

It’s become a familiar story in biopharma, as Big Pharma X announces that in the wake of the patent cliff, health care-spending pressures in Europe and diminished returns from internal R&D, it will be forced to cut back on R&D spending and make staff reductions primarily in sales and lab positions.

As the industry retrenches on early drug-discovery work, however, the need for innovation has not diminished and so the private sector frequently looks more and more to the academy for early research breakthroughs that might translate into therapies that will bolster the quarterly earnings reports a decade from now. In an effort to take advantage of that trend, some of the more forward-thinking university-based drug-discovery outfits in the U.S. have banded together to create a consortium they hope will facilitate and ease partnerships between academic institutions and the biopharmaceutical industry.

The brainchild of a meeting in Baltimore two autumns ago, the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium was more or less dreamed up by Barbara Slusher, director of the Translational Program at the Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and Jeffrey Conn, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, with input from three other founding institutions: University of North Carolina, Harvard University and University of California, San Francisco.

But in a relatively short time, ADDC’s membership has grown to 83 institutions, including six outside the U.S., and more than 550 individual members. And, just as importantly, big pharma has taken notice.

“They started out with two groups, Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins, and now they have 83 members,” said Bruce Harris, Roche’s director of academic alliances and an attendee and speaker at ADDC’s first annual conference Oct. 9-11 in Nashville.” All of these institutions are trying to incorporate drug discovery and translate some of the biological discoveries occurring in their laboratories into drug-discovery projects and, if you think about it, that’s an incredible resource for the industry and the early portion of our pipelines.”

It is a necessary development as well. “The area I work in, CNS, probably has been hit the hardest because it’s a risk area where companies are decreasing their internal efforts and several companies have just gotten out (altogether),” said Slusher, co-founder and president of ADDC.

She and Harris both point to an increased government funding interest in translational research that has occurred more or less in tandem with private industry’s cutbacks in discovery work. Specifically, they site the NIH Roadmap efforts undertaken during the tenure of former NIH Director Elias Zerhouni. “This has been a major change in the pharmaceutical industry,” Slusher said. “But as pharma has been decreasing some of its internal efforts, simultaneously what you see is NIH increasing its interest in activities in discovery and translation.”

While overall NIH funding has been roughly flat in recent years, she noted, funding for its National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) was increased by 11% for federal fiscal year 2013.

ADDC also reflects the exponential growth taking place in academic drug discovery. There were six U.S. academic institutions performing drug-discovery research in 1990, a number that had nearly tripled as of a decade ago. Now, there are more than 100 such units, and 78 of them have membership in ADDC, Slusher pointed out.

In addition to its domestic members, ADDC also has drawn the support of six international research outfits – the Centre of Applied Medical Research at the University of Navarra in Spain, the Karolinska Institute’s Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden, the genetic engineering and biotechnology labs at Shaqra University in Saudi Arabia, the Platform of Chemical Biology and ADME at the University of Strasbourg in France, the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre and Cancer Research UK.

While ADDC has a focus on facilitating partnerships with the private sector, Harris thinks another important role it can play is fostering research efforts across national borders. “I could easily see these U.S.-based academic institutions collaborating on drug-discovery work with their European colleagues,” he said. “Science is global and so are economies, so for them to work together without national boundaries is just natural.”

As Roche searches for programs and assets to invest in at the academic level, Harris said his emphasis will be on the company’s therapeutic areas of focus – oncology, neuroscience and infectious disease. Those priorities dovetail well with what is occurring in U.S. academic research – of the ADDC centers, 73% say they work in oncology, 65% in infectious disease, 63% in neurological disorders and 45% in immunology.

One of ADDC’s initial goals is to create a searchable database of the projects being undertaken by member institutions. Both institutional and individual membership in ADDC is free, meaning this should be a significant resource for academic alliance seekers, like Roche’s Harris. (The organization also is not planning to take a cut from members’ tech transfer deals as a funding mechanism. Instead, it has lined up more than 20 biopharma and service provider firms to sponsor ADDC activities so far, Slusher said.)

Meanwhile, ADDC has no plans, in the near term at least, to serve as a central negotiating point for tech transfer deals or to develop uniform documents and practices for such transactions. Harris said right now that activity seems neither necessary nor terribly feasible.

“I’m not sure that it would be useful to standardize all of the legal documents and arrangements because each university has its own mission within a given state or [based upon] who is supporting it,” Harris added. “They have to go by their own regulations, so having a common set of documents across multiple tech transfer offices at U.S. universities would be a monumental challenge, I think, and probably expensive from a legal point of view.”

And while we await a slew of deals between ADDC member institutions and the biopharma industry, we present this week’s roundup of ....

MedImmune/Spirogen/ADC Therapeutics: AstraZeneca’s biologics unit MedImmune will expand its early oncology pipeline with a new platform to make potent antibody-drug conjugates through the acquisition of U.K.-based Spirogen. Britain’s second-biggest drug maker said it was acquiring privately held Spirogen Oct. 15, paying up $200 million upfront and with another $240 million in potential earn-outs based on predefined milestones for Spirogen’s ADC technology, which has the potential to directly target cancer tumors while protecting healthy cells. Spirogen has developed a novel class of cytotoxic “warheads” based on pyrrolobenzodiazepine (PBDs), which are DNA minor-grove binding agents that bind to specific sites of DNA in cancer cells, according to MedImmune. This blocks the cell division and growth without distorting the DNA helix of cancer cells, which potentially could prevent the emergence of drug resistance. AstraZeneca is in the midst of a concerted push in oncology under the direction of CEO Pascal Soriot, who has revamped the company’s R&D direction over the past year and selected oncology as one of three focal therapeutic areas for the company. MedImmune now is focused on two key areas in oncology development – ADCs and immune-mediated cancer therapy – and says the acquisition of Spirogen fits that strategy perfectly. In connection with the deal, AstraZeneca simultaneously announced a coinciding agreement with Swiss-based ADC Therapeutics, which has a licensing agreement with Spirogen. Under that arrangement AstraZeneca will pay $20 million to take an equity investment in the company. The investment will be matched by Auven Therapeutics, the majority shareholder in both ADC Therapeutics and Spirogen. AstraZeneca will collaborate with ADC Therapeutics to develop two programs from a defined list and pay an undisclosed upfront payment and development milestones. ADC Therapeutics will have a profit-sharing arrangement and gets the option to co-promote one of the products in the U.S. The products to be developed using Spirogen’s technology are preclinical assets, so the latest deal will not yield commercially viable new medicines for several years. It is not yet clear when the products could move forward into clinical tests. Spirogen has been developing its PBD technology for more than 10 years, including a standalone PBD agent in a Phase II study in acute myeloid leukemia. Its business model has been to partner its technology with pharma and biotech for use in the development of novel drugs. It has a number of industry collaborations, including collaborations with Genmab in June 2013, Genentech in 2011 and with ADC Therapeutics announced in 2012. - Sten Stovall

AstraZeneca/Taris Biomedical: Bladder-disease focused Taris Biomedical signed a research agreement with AstraZeneca Oct. 16 to work on novel treatments for bladder cancer. No financial details were disclosed, but the pharma gets an option to license any products resulting from the collaboration. The partnership will involve using Taris’ proprietary delivery platform in combination with targeted bladder cancer drugs developed by AstraZeneca. The Lexington, Mass.-based biotech says its technology involves a soft and flexible device that is deployed into and retrieved from the patient’s bladder “using standard urological office procedures.” The technology is designed to provide continuous local delivery of a therapeutic agent to the bladder for days or weeks. “Their novel technology has the potential to enable the delivery of the right drugs to the tumor tissue in the right concentration and over a prolonged period,” said Susan Galbraith, head of AstraZeneca’s Oncology Innovative Medicines Unit in a release. “This could combine the ability to target the right tissue – the tumor – with the right genetically targeted therapy and therefore represent a step change in the treatment of this disease.” Taris is a clinical-stage firm focused on developing therapies for bladder cancer, overactive bladder and interstitial cystitis. Its lead candidate, LiRIS, is in Phase II in interstitial cystitis. In April, the biotech raised $12.5 million in a Series C round funded by returning investors Flagship Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Polaris Partners and Third Rock Ventures. - Joseph Haas

AmpliPhi Biosciences/University of Leicester: U.S. company AmpliPhi BioSciences announced an agreement Oct. 17 with a British academic group that has succeeded in identifying and characterizing bacteriophage (“phage”) that kill pathogenic strains of Clostridium difficile, a major cause of hospital-acquired severe diarrhea and vomiting. The University of Leicester  researchers will collaborate with AmpliPhi and another U.K. research team at the University of Glasgow on using the “bacteria-eating viruses” for clinical applications, with AmpliPhi funding the research, making milestone payments and paying royalties on any eventual products sales. In return, AmpliPhi receives rights to patents and intellectual property covering the Clostridium difficile-targeted phage research.
In a September 2013 report, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention called C difficile an urgent threat, causing 250,000 infections every year in the U.S. AmpliPhi believes it is conducting the only phage-based development program for this critical condition. Phage could yield ideal candidates for treating gastrointestinal infections, as they infect and kill a specific strain or species of bacteria, and should not affect beneficial gut bacteria. The research agreement is the third by AmpliPhi in the past six months, having linked up previously with the synthetic biology company Intrexon and the U.S Army. AmpliPhi expects its first therapeutic phage-based product, targeting Staphylococcus aureus and developed in collaboration with the U.S. military, to enter clinical trials next year. AmpliPhi is headquartered in Richmond, Va., but has operations in Colworth, U.K., and Sydney, Australia. - John Davis

Zydus Cadila/Pieris: India’s Zydus Cadila is teaming with Germany’s Pieris to develop and commercialize multiple novel protein therapeutics derived from the anticalin protein molecule. In an Oct. 16 announcement, the companies said the partnership would combine Pieris capabilities in drug discovery and early drug development with Zydus’ expertise in regulatory affairs and development and manufacturing of biologics. No financial terms were disclosed, but the companies said in a release that they will share licensing revenues under mutually agreed-upon terms. The collaboration is intended to develop candidates to proof-of-concept and then seek out-licensing in Pieris’ commercial territories. The most advanced program under the partnership is PRS-110, an anticalin protein specific for c-MET, a target that has been validated in a broad spectrum of tumor types. The candidate is a pure antagonist due to monovalent target engagement and in animal models has demonstrated the ability to inhibit ligand-dependent and –independent c-MET activity. - J.A.H.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Financings of the Fortnight Wonders About The Wolf

Huffing and puffing and blowing the NIH down?

The biggest financial news of the fortnight had to be the U.S. government’s failure to avoid the sequester budget cuts, and the odd collective yawn it produced. Even with the sword of Damocles poised above various agencies, markets kept climbing – including the Nasdaq and AMEX biotech indices (respectively up 3% and 2.5% this week, as of this writing). The stock shrug led some to accuse President Obama and his supporters of crying wolf.

Pre-sequester, one of the federal agency heads making dire predictions was NIH director Francis Collins, who said on a February 25 conference call that “somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 jobs will be lost.” Collins also pointed out the sequester will lead to delays and lost time in important drug development projects focused on cancer treatment, a universal influenza vaccine and Alzheimer’s disease.

(For "The Pink Sheet" DAILY's full sequester coverage, click here.) 

Now that the cuts are coming, we asked around to see if, in our little corner of the world, the wolf was still howling. In other words, how might the cuts trickle up into the biotech startup realm, with potentially fewer innovations to hone into new companies? Part of that trickle flows through the technology transfer offices of major non-profit research centers, so we started there. What do they think?

Scott Forrest, the tech transfer chief at the prolific Scripps Research Institute  of Technology in La Jolla, Calif. – which has helped spawn biotechs such as FoldRx Pharmaceuticals, now part of Pfizer, aTyr Pharma, CovX Research (also bought by Pfizer), Receptos and Ambrx -- told The In Vivo Blog he didn’t expect any near-term pain in the next, say, six months. "Beyond that, we’re practicing watchful waiting," said Forrest. "We just don’t know what to expect."

We wondered if there's a correlation between NIH budgets and biotech company formation. Bob Coughlin, the head of the biotech trade group in Massachusetts, the state that receives the most NIH funding, told us "the long-term effect will be seen four, five, ten years from now when we don’t have new therapies and ideas in our pipeline of future companies." 

But the National Venture Capital Association has never done a study on such correlation -- and its life science policy VP Kelly Slone told FOTF she isn't aware of one. So until we crunch those numbers ourselves, there’s no precedent to gauge potential fallout by that measure.

Todd Sherer, the president of the Association of University Technology Managers wouldn’t go as far as to predict the impact on company formation. But Sherer, who also runs tech transfer at Emory University in Atlanta, said funding does correlate to invention disclosures: "So if funding dollars go down, there will be some latency, perhaps two or three years, but expect to see a drop in the number of new invention disclosures that turn into licensable technology."

Sherer also said that the tech transfer bottleneck, already an impediment, will only get worse. "Through the global financial crisis, universities haven’t increased patent budgets or [added staff], despite the federal funding increases and the number of new inventions arriving. So we’ve had more inventions coming our way, but no increase in staff or budget to handle them, and with fewer outlets [among VCs or pharmas to license them]. We’re just now coming out of a perfect storm. I’m afraid we left important innovation along the roadside during the financial crisis, and we’re about to head that way again," said Sherer.

VCs like to say that the best technologies and product candidates will always rise to the top and attract money. But with the life-science venture population shrinking, and those remaining often in pursuit of later-stage investments that won’t take so long to mature, fewer VCs are even looking toward academia. As part of its annual A-List feature in January, START-UP asked dozens of life-science VCs to name the best sources of innovation. Only 15% said academia. Unscientific, true – but Sherer wasn't surprised by the sentiment. With universities dabbling more in translational science, and big drug companies forging ties left and right with academics, he said the odds of getting something licensed might be better when going "directly to Big Pharma and big biotechs and avoiding the start-up route. I haven’t seen data that that’s the case, but conceptually it seems possible." 

This all may be moot when the new federal budget is negotiated. But with wolves at the door and fiscal hawks flapping their wings -- and gums -- we aren't predicting anything. Howl as much as you want, but you'll never filibuster long enough to avoid...

Tesaro: Basking in the afterglow of its successful 2012 IPO, the publicly traded oncology developer sold 5.4 million common shares in a secondary offering at $18 per share that raised net proceeds of $91 million for the Boston-area company. Tesaro says the cash will go toward its development programs, rolapitant, niraparib and TSR-011, which were all in-licensed. The $18 price was $1.09 below the firm’s closing price February 22, the last business day before the offer was announced. Since the announcement Tesaro shares have risen to $24.36 a piece as of mid-day trading March 7. The firm, which debuted in late June at $14 a share, was one of several in the IPO class of 2012 to finish the year above its offer price. It’s a prime example of a recent biotech phenomenon that constrains the number of companies able to go public, but rewards those that manage to squeeze through the window. Tesaro executives and directors stand to benefit, as they owned nearly 70% of the company before the secondary offering. Their holding now stand at nearly 60%. Tesaro was formed by the former executive team of MGI Pharma, which was bought by Eisai in late 2007 for $3.3 billion. New Enterprise Associates, InterWest Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers were Tesaro’s three main venture backers, and all three still have Tesaro board seats. There were 13 biopharma and diagnostic IPOs on U.S. exchanges in 2012, and three venture-backed firms have debuted so far this year. (We’re not counting Pfizer’s animal-health spinoff Zoetis.) Citigroup and Morgan Stanley led Tesaro’s underwriters, who sold their full overallotment of 708,000 shares. -- Alex Lash

Ablynx: Belgium's publicly-traded Ablynx has raised €31.5 million ($41.2 million) in a private placement announced February 28, two weeks after announcing positive Phase II results for ALX-0061, a second rheumatoid arthritis-targeted product from the company’s Nanobody platform. The placement is the second largest financing in Europe’s therapeutic biotech sector this year, trailing only the $60.9 million raised by e-Therapeutics in February. Nanobodies are small-sized, single-domain antibody fragments that penetrate deep into target tissues. They also bind strongly to human serum albumin, which prolongs their circulation time in the body. The funds will support further development of ALX-0061, an IL6R inhibitor, and other Nanobodies. The funds give Ablynx greater flexibility over future development plans, allowing it to consider co-development or co-promotion – it has 25 programs in its pipeline, including five at the clinical development stage, and a roster of Big Pharma partners, including Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck Serono, Novartis and Merck & Co. It is also evaluating the attachment of therapeutic payloads to Nanobodies through recent agreements with Spirogen and Algeta. Euronext Brussels-listed Ablynx sold 4.4 million new shares at €7.20 per share, a 6.7% discount to the February 27 closing price. Pre-IPO shareholders and warrant holders also sold 1.9 million shares at the same price, bringing the total amount placed to €45 million. -- John Davis

Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals: Looking to create a new class of drug that potentially could be included in next-generation, all-oral antiviral regimens for chronic hepatitis C, Spring Bank announced a $10.5 million Series A financing on February 28. The funding, from Brock Securities and Gilford Securities, will help advance lead candidate SB 9200 into a Phase I safety and antiviral efficacy trial this quarter and further the Massachusetts biotech’s preclinical pipeline. SB 9200, derived from Spring Bank’s proprietary Small Molecule Nucleic Acid Hybrid technology platform, produces an antiviral effect by activating the host-immune response in HCV-infected cells, the company says. It targets two host cytosolic proteins, RIG-I and NOD2, to set off selective activation of immune response in the presence of viral infection. In preclinical study, the compound has shown synergistic activity with other HCV antivirals and demonstrated a clean safety profile. Spring Bank thinks ‘9200 will prove to pair well with other new direct-acting antivirals for HCV thanks to the potential for pan-genotypic activity and a high barrier to resistance. Previously, Spring Bank raised $600,000 in angel financing in 2009, got a $244,000 grant under the U.S. Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project in 2010 and received a $3.9 million grant in 2011 from NIH. The company’s preclinical pipeline includes programs for hepatitis B, respiratory syncytial virus, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and broad-spectrum antibiotics. -- Joseph Haas

Daiichi Sankyo: The Japanese drug giant with a long history has jumped on a recent bandwagon by forming its own venture group, as our friends at PharmAsia News reported March 4. To date, Daiichi Sankyo has invested as a limited partner in other venture funds as a window into deal flow and to gain preferential co-investment rights. But it has now created its own direct-investment vehicle to be overseen by global R&D chief Glenn Gormley, who is based in New Jersey. It joins Merck Serono, Merck & Co., Shire and other pharma companies with relatively new venture groups. Daiichi Sankyo didn’t disclose how much cash the group will have to invest, but corporations are using even relatively small amounts to invest aggressively, as corporate venture becomes a larger part of the biotech funding landscape. Corporate groups are now frequent investors in early-stage companies, once a no-go zone. In 2012, for example, Novartis’s venture group was just as active in Series A investments as Third Rock Ventures, which is one of the few traditional VCs still gung-ho for company formation. -- Daniel Poppy and Alex Lash

All of the Rest: A Series E financing led by Invesco Perpetual brought Glide Pharma £14M… In a combination Series A/loan, Dezima Pharma raised €14.2M to fund development of a dyslipidemia candidate acquired from Mitsubishi Tanabe… Attempting to overcome mucosal barriers in treating disease, Kala Pharma closed on $11.5M in Series A financing… The Dundee Corp. provided $10.5M in additional funding to TauRx for its Alzheimer’s compound… Blaze Biosciences completed a $8.5M Series A to support work on high-res technology for tumor visualization… The venture arm of leading Korean aesthetic firm AmorePacific led a $7M Series B for Brickell Biotech… With proceeds going towards Alzheimer’s agent ladostigil, Avraham added $5.7M to its Series B, now totaling $8.7M… DecImmune raised $3.2M to help develop an antibody that reduces tissue damage due to heart attack… Botanical products company KannaLife raised $1.5M in Series A funds...using social media and nonprofit advocacy to solicit biomedical research materials, Sanguine Biosciences completed a seed round… Public Swedish autoimmune/cancer company Active Biotech raised SEK270M from Investor AB… Celsion’s zero coupon preferred stock offering grossed $15M… Opko Health led a $16.4M financing for RNA-targeting RXi Pharma...oncology-focused EntreMed privately raised $11M… To fund a clinical de-risking bioequivalence study of its lead Parkinson's candidate, Canadian biotech Cynapsus closed on $Cdn6M from a syndicate including an undisclosed strategic investor… In a follow-on offering, Immunomedics raised $14M… Diabetes-focused DiaMedica announced a public offering of units… Orphan drug company Hyperion is planning to sell 2.6M shares publicly…Merck Serono spun off (and seeded with €2.5M) its latest start-up Calypso Biotech to pursue inflammatory bowel diseases… OrbiMed Advisors is reportedly raising a second pain-Asia health care fund worth $500M. -- Amanda Micklus

Wolf yawn photo courtesy of Flickr user ArranET.