Roche has done its fourth China deal since August, teaming with Defand Therapeutics on protein degraders, according to Endpoints News. The Defand company is confirmed to exist as a China-based biotech, but no deal terms were confirmed in the reporting available and no second source was located, so the deal structure should be treated as unconfirmed. The pattern is clear regardless: Roche keeps buying into targeted protein degradation and keeps buying it in China, where regulatory flexibility and government support have drawn a growing share of pharma R&D.
In a small trial reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, optogenetics restored some vision lost to retinitis pigmentosa, per a STAT report. The trial is early and small, and only the STAT summary could be reviewed, so this stays at grade C pending the primary paper.
Two startups secured venture cash, per BioPharma Dive’s roundup: KymaThera raised an $80 million Series B, led by Alta Partners with Foresite Capital and Venrock participating, toward a treatment for vascular malformations and PI3Kα-driven cancers, with Phase 1 testing expected in the fourth quarter; and RougeTx launched with a $58 million Series A to advance RTX-001, a once-daily oral treatment for the rare bleeding disorder hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia.
Enliven Therapeutics aligned with the FDA on the design of a late-stage study for its chronic myeloid leukemia drug relcobatinib, which blocks expression of a faulty gene driving CML. The planned trial will enroll 450 people and test whether relcobatinib is superior to another drug in its class at producing a major molecular response. Enliven is emerging as a potential threat to Novartis’s Scemblix and to a therapy Merck acquired in its $6.7 billion Terns Pharmaceuticals deal.
Insmed CFO Sara Bonstein will step down on October 30, ending a seven-year run; no successor has been named and a search will begin. The company reaffirmed its full-year guidance. AstraZeneca opened a new Boston site, part of the industry’s continuing R&D concentration in the Boston cluster.